Horizon
by Ferrard Carson
Summary: A series of point-of-view stories centered around the Battle of Horizon.  Will contain graphic violence, eventual Fem!Shep / Alenko angst, and of course, Mass Effect 2 spoilers.
1. Silent Running: Captain Allen Kutuz

_As usual, I do not own, nor claim to own, anything affiliated with BioWare's most magnificent piece of Intellectual Property. I merely write about it. If you're not interested in the OC's here, don't worry - this story is indeed about Shep and Co. Stay awhile and take a gander, and please leave a review, a critique, or maybe just something fluffy. Most important, I hope you enjoy the yarn.  
_

* * *

**Prologue: Silent Running**

The lights dimmed in the communications room as Captain Allen Kutuz stepped inside. The door partitions hissed closed behind him, and he tugged fastidiously at his uniform jacket, star and anchor sparkling on the collar. Formal dress, just as Kutuz had preferred for his odd two-decades of service. Strictly speaking, the dress-blues were unnecessary and stiff in the presence of the more sensible dungarees worn by just about everyone else, but they spoke of tradition, and Captain Kutuz held a healthy respect for tradition.

Of course, it helped that those dress blues happened to have a small discrete bit of gold pinned by his rank. Few would give lip to a holder of the Star of Terra.

Waving off a brief acknowledgement of the collected officers, Kutuz sat down at the conference table, nodding to the woman at its head.

"Right," Lieutenant Kierney Phillips said. "This morning's briefing will be just us on the ship for now—Commander Alenko is busy dealing with the natives."

Rolling right past the subdued groans of frustration, Kierney tapped the haptic display and said, "First up: the GARDIAN lasers we offloaded are still giving us fits. Engineer Orozco is going to assemble a team to go ashore in two hours time. Commander Alenko thinks he may have a lead on both the unauthorized power usage and the calibration errors, so you'll have something to follow up on planetside, commander."

"Great," Orozco said. At the captain's glance, he continued. "I want to take Chief Tanner and Serviceman Robinson with me—the kid needs some experience in the field, and this is a good chance for it."

Kutuz drew up the roster in his mind. Tanner was a good choice, level-headed and a software guru. Robinson was so young it was painful, but the captain could see his potential, just as Engineer Orozco was quietly pushing the kid towards fast-track status. Training the recruits was one of the many things he could trust Orozco to pull off with flying colors.

"Approved," Kutuz said with a curt nod. "Next."

The minutes rolled by as Kierney continued her briefing. Even as he listened, Kutuz was running through today's schedule in his mind. The _Ain Jalut_ hummed in quiet activity as the shifts changed. Kutuz watched as the hairs on the back of his hand pulsed while the ship performed its weekly static discharge at Horizon's south pole.

Kierney was smiling. She always smiled when she had something juicy up her sleeve. Kutuz hated it when she waited until the end to reveal her secrets, but the rest of the wardroom always ate it up. So the captain merely bided his time while she droned on about Horizon's weather forecast and shuttle operations.

Almost absent-mindedly, she tapped a holographic button and flipped to the next slide. Instantly the banter and smiles died.

"And now we get to the important bit," she said, all hint of a smile gone. "InOps passed along the report a few minutes ago."

The blasphemous image of a ghost ship burned on the viewscreen. Sleek, flowing lines betrayed none of its secrets, none of its hidden poison. In all fairness, Kutuz considered her a beautiful ship, save the small symbol brazenly painted across the front. The sheer arrogance of those bastards, the absolute disdain with which they spat upon the most revered name in the System Alliance Navy's List of Honor, had never ceased to amaze the captain in the month since the frigate had first been sighted pulling into dock at the pisshole that was Omega.

Kierney continued. "The _Normandy_ cleared the Hawking Eta relay yesterday, and was last known to be in the queue for the Omega-Iera relay. This information is barely an hour-and-a-half old, so it's likely she'll be appearing in-system within the next hour."

Kutuz let silence envelope the room as officers looked in turn at him, the table, and the picture of the ghost ship, taken from the observation deck of the Citadel as she undocked. InOps was right. Cerberus was gunning for these colonies.

_Not on my watch_.

"Mr. Levitt, prepare the ship for silent running. Miss Phillips, I want a recon drone dispatched to the relay for early warning. Orozco, belay your previous orders; you're going groundside in thirty minutes. Get your team together and get those GARDIANs online before the dogs show up.

"You know your jobs. Do them. Dismissed."

* * *

Placing a hand on Levitt's shoulder as the pilot sat at his post, Kutuz watched the feed from the recon drone as it circled the Iera relay barely ten minutes later. On the display, the drone relayed imagery of a strange, absolutely perplexing spaceship. Active scanners recorded every detail, caressing the newly arrived vessel with pings of energy and relaying the data back to the frigate.

"Sir, what the hell is that?" Levitt said as he flipped the _Ain Jalut_ to expose her fin-mounted sensor suite to the new contact, arbitrarily designated Sierra 13.

The captain watched as the telemetry streamed in, measurements and power readings, a strange sense of unease washing over his mind as Kierney firmed up the contact. Noting the profile and rough energy signature, Kutuz glanced at the system chart for a brief moment, checking planetary and lunar alignments before turning back to Levitt.

"Mr. Levitt, engage silent running and plot a course to Prospect IV," he said. Left unspoken was the sudden fearful recognition that struck Kutuz as the data tugged at old briefings and the last battle analysis he'd read before assuming command of the _Ain Jalut_. A battle analysis he'd read with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, had killed his ship's older sister with the casual aplomb of swatting a fly.

"Aye aye, sir," the pilot said.

Kierney muttered a subdued curse, startling half the bridge crew as her hands flew across the haptic display while a much louder burst of static blared from her console. "Lost the drone, captain."

Kutuz frowned. "Were you painted by ladar beforehand?"

"Yes sir."

"Did it match any known signal patterns?"

"Hold on, sir" Kierney said. "Computer's chewing on it."

He already knew what it would find. What InOps called "super-ladar" was a nasty surprise to the _Normandy_ those two years before; it remained one of the longest ranged active scanners ever found on a spaceship, for reasons which became abundantly clear the moment the unknown cruiser opened fire. Directed energy weapons of that power and magnitude weren't supposed to be possible. Human, even Salarian understanding of physics simply could not allow for that kind of damage and range to exist properly, especially in the visible light spectrum.

And yet it clearly did. And now Captain Allen Kutuz was certain he was staring down the barrel of those guns that physics insisted couldn't exist.

"Miss Phillips?" he said.

"Yes sir… ladar matches signals recorded by the _Normandy_'s black-box before her destruction."

Silence ruled on the bridge. Seated at their stations and strapped in for combat, servicemen traded nervous looks as they watched their consoles update. Levitt coughed, betraying the nervousness everyone within earshot was struggling so studiously to hide. The gravity flickered momentarily as the pilot angled the _Ain Jalut_ into the star Iera, as though the ship herself were hesitant and unsure. Batarians were one thing. So too was Cerberus, the terrorists playing at being a galactic power. The former had only ever seen the _Ain Jalut_ once in action, and to this day they rued the name Kutuz. The latter were simply terrorists. However many former Alliance members they'd snapped up, Kutuz had little fear that Cerberus could match the Alliance ship-for-ship in training and discipline.

This abomination, though. The killer of the _Normandy_. The unfair, unsporting killers of Commander Shepard herself. The ones who murdered Pressly. This ship was an unknown, something Kutuz hadn't prepared for. How could he? Pressly's killers hadn't been seen in two years, had vanished into the black of space as violently as they had emerged.

Protocol came easy. When faced with overwhelming force: Alert, Evade, Improvise, Observe, and sUrvive. Most important at this point were Evade and Observe, a task for which the _Ain Jalut_ was ideally inclined.

At length, Kutuz began snapping off orders. "Tracking, upgrade Sierra 13 to Master 2. Mr. Levitt, best possible silent speed to Prospect IV. Maintain sensor coverage of Master 2 at all times. Miss Phillips, launch another probe and start your profile." A chorus of aye's followed him as he clasped his hands behind him and set off for the CIC.

"Captain, shall I notify Commander Alenko?"

Kutuz's words caught in his throat. Master 2 hadn't given any indication that he'd spotted the _Ain Jalut_, but any active transmissions—for instance, an alert to the shore party—might betray their presence. If it were Batarians he was up against, the procedure would be different, but Master 2's sensor suite was a complete unknown. A complete unknown that saw right through the _Normandy_'s stealth. The answer came all too readily.

"Negative," he said, cold thoughts coursing through his mind. "We cannot risk detection. Commander Alenko's on his own for now."

**

* * *

Codex Entry: Ladar / Lidar and the **_**Normandy**_**-class Stealth Systems**

The loss of the _SSV Normandy_, SR-1 came as a rude shock to the Alliance public, especially when news media reported that the _Normandy_'s stealth systems had been completely ineffectual. Members of the Terra Firma party were quick to lay blame upon Turian design flaws, and the subsequent political firestorm buried the facts of the encounter beneath a veritable tidal wave of recriminations.

At the most basic level, the loss of the _SSV Normandy_ was due to her opponent's highly accurate intelligence, a disquieting fact to InOps analysts. The _Normandy_ was brought under fire barely a minute after translating out of FTL, and little to no magic was involved in her detection by the aggressor force.

FTL travel infallibly radiates a visible signature at the speed of light, with no possibility of trapping emissions with the _Normandy_'s stealth systems. As such, the aggressor force had an extremely accurate datum with which to localize the _Normandy_. Following this, the aggressor force displayed an extremely advanced ladar capability, using visible light in order to detect the _Normandy_.

The greatest reason for the _Normandy_'s loss was simply in the nature of ladar. A ladar telescope capable of imaging a ship at the ranges involved is constructed in almost the exact same manner as a directed-energy weapon, more commonly known as lasers. Once the aggressor force had identified the _Normandy_, crippling and destroying the frigate was simply a matter of boosting the power to the ladar systems by several orders of magnitude.

Currently, the Alliance has yet to develop a true counter to this advanced ladar capability, instead investing heavily in ablative armors and further research into dispersing directed-energy weapons. Asari research into the matter has proved more fruitful, yielding high resistance Silaris Armor which has been fitted onto several test-bed Asari frigates in an effort to determine its feasibility for general fleet usage.

**

* * *

Author Notes:**

This story had its beginnings in a Creative Writing class I took in the Spring of 2010. I was told that my characters all sounded alike, and so I started this project, with the intent of developing the ability to write distinct sounding characters. That and I also wanted to poke at the thoughts behind the squadmates of Mass Effect 2, and solve the riddle of just how Kaidan / Ashley was able to shake off his / her stasis so damn fast on Horizon. Besides, I like Kaidan's character. Not so much a fan of the fluff-for-fluff's sake or the "wrecked Kaidan loses control after Shepard's death" aspect that a lot of fan-fic takes - he's still a soldier. I will be altering some events and continuities, given that a third-person-shooter doesn't lend itself well to a good narrative. "I took cover, I fired, I took cover, I fired," etc.

Anyways. This is going to continue being a WIP through the school year, and might not update very often. Then again, I did write this prologue in less than two days, so I guess my update schedule is going to be more "erratic" than anything else.

Stay tuned for the next chapter, in which Kaidan will deal with those pesky colonists, after which you all should know what happens.

~ Ferrard


	2. Roswell: Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko

**Chapter One: Roswell**

The day had started out so well.

Relatively speaking, that was. Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko hated his current assignment. He awoke from a deep slumber with a monstrous insect bite throbbing on his left arm, the gooey remains of what could only be described as a terrestrial mosquito on steroids splattered where he had unwittingly swatted the thing. The itching was already driving him up the wall as he slathered ointment on the angry red welt, examining the bite in the mirror.

The shower was a pathetic little thing, hooked up to a small reservoir of rain-water gathered and purified on the roof. It could have been worse—after a life in space, Kaidan was used to the rinse-lather-rinse procedure, something referred to by marines as the "Arcturus Shower." It got you clean, but that was about it.

It was only when he wrapped a towel around his waist and walked back out into the rest of the pre-fab that the day _really_ soured.

"Aw shit son, you got another of those damned headaches?" Gunny Harrison said as Kaidan flinched away from the harsh artificial light.

Kaidan said, "Not exactly my choice Gunny, but yeah."

"Well then," the gunnery chief said. "You just sit here and take your beauty nap and leave the locals to me! Just wait 'til you see ol' Gunny Harrison in action," he swaggered around the room, "You ain't seen nothing until you watch all the ladies—"

"Horizon is doomed," Kaidan deadpanned as he smacked Harrison in the face with a thrown MRE.

Catching the packaging before it fell to the pre-fab's floor, Harrison looked down and licked his lips. "Mmm-mmm, re-constituted strawberry short-bread, re-constituted egg whites, egg-yolk separate (also re-constituted), and a protein bar of mysterious flavor and origin. Man," he griped as he unwrapped the protein bar and took a bite, walking into the washroom. "The grub here just gets better all the time, eh commander?"

"You shut your face, Gunny, I gotta choke down twice as much of this stuff as you," Kaidan said as he slipped into his under-armor jumpsuit. The ballistic nylon stretched and slid on like a second skin. "I'm really quite surprised none of the locals have picked up on that."

"Yeah, well, you need a bit o' crazy to come out here, nothing says you need a bit o' brain."

Kaidan grunted an agreement to Harrison's sentiment. He slid the various bits of hardsuit into place with a series of muted clicks and closed the snaps, ceramic settling over the jumpsuit and interfacing with the back-mounted processor and radioisotope battery. The commander's omnitool beeped obligingly when he flipped it on, throwing up a small holographic readout of the suit functions while it performed a self-diagnostic check. The routine was the same as always, and some of the kids had asked to see it before. Kaidan had obliged them until their parents started complaining. Yet another way he was corrupting the colony's youth into obeying the iron fist of the Alliance, or something like that.

Putting a hand to his temple and massaging his head, Kaidan bit into a protein bar, the dry gritty taste clogging up his throat like always. This one was flavored with a bit of beef bouillon—or maybe it was pork. He couldn't always tell with MRE's. "So," he said around the thick cloying paste in his mouth. "Any ideas who has that missing calibration chip, Gunny?"

A frustrated sigh was his answer. "Any one of these yahoos could have swiped it. Who knows, maybe it was a kid playing soldier-boy."

"I just hope it's not deliberate."

"Face it Commander. It probably is," Harrison said. "You've seen the looks they give us. We're baby-killers."

"Gunny, that's not quite fair, and you know it."

"Fair or not, it's how they treat us." The shower flipped on, and Kaidan nursed his headache while finishing the rest of the protein bar. One down, one more to go. Damn the biotic metabolism.

* * *

By the time Harrison was suited up, Kaidan had finished his breakfast and made his way through his second kata, the smooth, choreographed mnemonics that tickled the back of his brain and swathed him in a pleasing blue aura. Horizon's sun peeked into sight, flooding the pre-fab with golden light. Wincing at the sunrise, Kaidan dropped his stance, the biotic glow fading from sight, and grabbed his weapons, slinging them onto the magnets on his back and waist, locking them into place once he was satisfied with the balance.

Of course, a pair of mass-accelerator small arms little endeared him to the colonists, but regs were regs. Planets in the Terminus Systems were considered to be at constant risk for another aggressive push by Batarian scum or other lowlifes, and this planet in particular was supposedly serving as bait. Slavers weren't stupid, but they were opportunistic. Officially, InOps had pegged a sophisticated slaving ring as the most likely culprit behind the colony abductions, and going by the pattern of abductions, Horizon looked like a likely candidate next on their list. On the other official hand, if it were Cerberus behind this mess, and if Cerberus was half as well connected as InOps believed them to be, then they wouldn't miss a chance to nab these people. Horizon was a healthy colony, a prime control group with few habitat-related abnormalities. They might even get a few recruits out of it, considering the mix of xenophobia, anti-Alliance sentiment, and rebelliousness that comprised the majority of the population here.

Not that he'd tell anyone the real reason the _Ain Jalut _was in Standard Orbit overhead.

Jogging alongside Harrison, Kaidan made his way into town, smiling and waving to the few colonists out and about this early in the morning. Few waved back. Horizon was a testament to the power of efficient resource use. Every single building was the exact same, one pre-fabricated rounded rectangular structure after another set out at pre-determined intervals, the hydraulic feet mounting each one perfectly level a few inches off the ground. The antiseptic white walls (actually, just un-painted) made the entire colony feel like a hospital or a science facility, though occasionally a colonist had spent the time and effort to personalize their home. Christmas lights and small paper lanterns were hung across some of the buildings, and a few had murals painted on the side—the work of Ophelia, one of the children.

In the distance, a shuttle could be seen lifting off from the spaceport, likely darting off to one of the moons dotting Prospect's orbit. Its forward viewport glinted in the sun as it ascended until it was no more than a pinprick of white, fading out of sight into the brilliant blue sky. Overhead, he could see a small speck of light arcing its way across the cloudless vista—the _Ain Jalut_, his omnitool said, on its routine trip to the planet's South Pole to disperse its static charge. Cuing up a message explaining his intentions and suspicions with regards to his task, Kaidan transferred it to the communications center for relay to his ship and then breathed deep as he jogged, helmet clanking off his hip.

The smell was something he'd never gotten used to. It was too sweet, too bitter, too ephemeral and ever-changing. For a marine who'd served his entire life on space stations or in the halls of a frigate or cruiser, real air, with its heady mix of pollen and dew and freshly turned soil, felt unnatural to breathe for more than a day or two. Its lack of metallic taste was subtle—in all honesty Kaidan himself never realized how important that particular smell was until it wasn't there.

"Hey soldier," came a nearby voice. "Care for some company?"

"Lilith," Harrison said. "Nice to see you again."

"Likewise," she replied, pacing the pair of marines as they entered the center of town. "I heard you were going to give another crack at calibrating the targeting matrix?"

Kaidan grimaced, a flash of sunlight jolting his head with a shot of pain, "Actually, that bit is simple enough—we just need the right calibration chip."

"So do you have it?" she asked.

"No. We just need to contact my ship and have them fabricate one for us," Kaidan lied effortlessly.

Harrison shook his head. "What the Commander means to say is one of your buddies made off with it during our lunch break yesterday."

"What?" Lilith said. "They're still giving you grief?"

"No end of it," Harrison replied.

With a contrite look at Kaidan, Lilith said, "Commander, I—I'm sorry about this. I know you're just trying to help us, and look how we repay you."

"There's no need to apologize for it, ma'am," Kaidan said, waving off the remorse. "Doesn't help us get the thing up and running."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'll come along and do what I can to help."

Harrison caught the commander's eye, shrugging as if to say, _what've we got to lose?_ To an extent, Kaidan agreed. Besides, she really did seem to hold some respect here—more than could be said for either soldier.

"That would be appreciated, ma'am," Kaidan replied.

* * *

"A what?"

Kaidan repeated, "A calibration chip – it's a small computer chip—"

"I know that, genius," Delan said, glaring at the commander.

"It's a computer chip," Kaidan resumed, "that has the parameters of the guns on them. We took it from the _Ain Jalut_ when we pulled off the GARDIAN batteries, and—"

"I ain't seen a chip around here, so buzz off and leave me alone would you? I got actual work to do—don't have the luxury of screwing with someone else's life like you."

Lilith piped up, "Delan, we're just trying to get those things working so that they can leave and let us get on with our lives."

"Lilith, open your eyes. You think they're just going to leave us alone? No, Commander shiny pants here is going to stick around to babysit us."

Kaidan said, "Sir, I—"

"Don't 'sir' me like I'm one of you guys," the prickly mechanic said.

"_Delan_, then. My mission is to give this colony a viable defense, and then leave you alone. The Alliance has no interest in controlling you, just protecting you."

"Yeah, from your threats!" A greasy finger waved in Kaidan's face. "We're only going to get in trouble now because it looks like we're your colony."

The lights within the pre-fab structure flickered momentarily, plunging the room into darkness for several seconds before flashing back to full.

"What was that?" Lilith asked.

Delan grumbled as he looked over his omnitool, "Looks like a power surge. Came from that damn generator the Alliance installed under the spaceport. Typical, now I gotta clean up your mess."

With as infuriatingly polite a tone as ever, Kaidan said, "I'm sorry to be a bother. If you see the chip, please tell me at once."

"Yeah, buzz off," Delan said with a dismissive wave.

His headache worsening by the moment, Kaidan stepped back outside into the mid-morning sun. Every step echoed in his head as waves of frustration bounced around his skull incessantly. Harrison tossed his cigarette down into the dirt and stamped it out as Kaidan blinked in the light, giving the Gunny an angry grimace. While Lilith walked away to speak with Sten, the utilities guy, Harrison ambled over and handed Kaidan a canteen of water. The commander gladly accepted it, taking a swig, then sloshing a handful over his head.

"I take it things went better than last time?" Harrison asked.

"_I_ didn't punch him, if that's what you mean," Kaidan said, leaning against a nearby rail and rubbing the water into his face.

Harrison grinned, "Not-punching the dumbass ain't exactly a thing to be proud of." At the lack of response, he changed his tack, "Hey Alenko, just trying to find a laugh in you somewhere."

Kaidan laughed, a stilted chuckle that came out more a sigh. "Thanks for the thought, Gunny."

"No problem. Someone's gotta look out for you high-and-mighty types," Harrison said, eliciting a more natural smile from the commander. "Ah, what's the use," he said, dropping his voice. "Not like those damn things are going to be useful anyways."

Kaidan turned and looked at his comrade. "What do you mean?" he asked innocently.

"I mean, that even a young'un like you ought to see what's wrong with this. None of these damn yokels know their way around a comm laser, much less a GARDIAN battery, but you, you oughta see what's wrong."

Kaidan could see the problem Harrison mentioned. The commander had seen it the moment he had drawn this assignment. The GARDIANs were certainly effective weapons—at knife-fight ranges, a frigate wolf-pack could use their lasers to simply carve up a good sized cruiser into little cubes. A properly emplaced GARDIAN turret could even defend a sizable arc of sky, and theoretically, the emplacements installed around Horizon were adequate to keep any ship from approaching within line of sight.

The devil, as always, was in the details. The GARDIAN batteries pulled from the _Ain Jalut_ weren't designed for atmospheric work. A ground-based GARDIAN might look the same as the ship-board variety, but the guts were completely different. To be used in atmo, a GARDIAN needed to be fit with a new focusing lens, a power source nearly three times the strength of the space-borne equivalent, and a special software suite designed to prevent blooming. The first bit was easy enough—micro-fabricators in the colonists possession could fashion the right lens and focal assembly. The second bit was harder—the _Ain Jalut_ had been forced to offload its ground vehicle in order to fit a full-sized perimeter defense generator into the cargo hold, and it had been an absolute mule to install underground.

The software was the real problem though. Without it, the GARDIAN lasers would roil the air it passed through, de-focusing the beam until it more resembled a flashlight instead of a lance of infrared energy. Simply put, the GARDIAN batteries would have one, maybe two effective shots, after which they would be useless. The software was, quite obviously, highly classified, and the moment they'd left Arcturus, they'd lost access to it.

He'd known this from the start, and he had little doubt Gunny Harrison wasn't the only crewmember to figure it out as well. It all begged the question as to what the _Ain Jalut_ was even doing here, a question Harrison was no doubt burning to ask the commander. After all, no one else but Kaidan had been invited onto Arcturus Station a month ago to meet with Admiral Hackett and Councilor Anderson. Everyone knew their new XO had returned much quieter and more pensive than he'd left. Everyone knew Councilor Anderson's trip had been made in the strictest confidence, going so far as to even cover up his having left the Citadel at all. No one knew just what, or rather _who_, that briefing had concerned.

No one knew Shepard was back.

No one knew she was wearing a Cerberus uniform.

No one knew the extent to which Kaidan had wanted to utterly trash Hackett's office when the good Admiral had shoved the photos in his face. No one knew the amount of sheer iron-fisted control he'd had to exert to rein himself in.

No one could know that the GARDIAN assignment was a red-herring. If it turned fruitful and fended off a Batarian attack down the line, then all the better, but the real purpose was simply knowledge. InOps liked to think itself clever, but Anderson was the true brains behind this. Kaidan had always known there was more to the captain than a rifle and an attitude, but the one thing he'd never known before was how utterly ruthless Anderson could be.

_Truth_, he'd said. _Duty yes, but Truth is why you will do this mission. Because deep down inside, you want to know whether that's really Shepard. You want to know. You have to know. You need to know. And if you won't do it because of Truth, then you'll do it because of Duty, you'll do it because your uniform means more to you than one night of glorious fucking!_

The provocation had worked. He still had no idea how Anderson had found out, but it had worked, and the councilor had played Kaidan like a fiddle. The truth had been plain to see on the commander's face, and he knew it from the flush of anger that had swept up and down his spine.

_No_, Anderson had said. _No, it wasn't just that, was it? You need this answer just as much as we do. For far more noble reasons than ours. We're just tired old men, grasping at straws._ Those old eyes, witness to a hundred battles, had looked at Kaidan, seen through the image to the man, and Anderson had finished. _Your ship leaves in twelve hours. Don't worry about finding her. If it's really her she'll come to you. You'll know what to do_.

"Yeah, you do," Harrison said. "You know what's wrong, and what's really going on. It's classified?"

"You know I can't answer that, Gunny."

"Yup, it's classified."

"The old 'need-to-know' deal," Kaidan said.

Harrison nodded. "And right now, I don't need to know. I get your drift, sir; forget I asked."

The conversation died, leaving the two soldiers leaning against the railing, passing a canteen back and forth. The hell of it was, Kaidan really did want to tell. A secret was no fun unless someone else knew, and the universe really did need to know of Shepard's messianic return. The woman was a force of nature, a saint, and to have her resurrected like a mythical demi-god was… well, it just was. All his life, Kaidan had seen the worst this galaxy had to offer. The assholes who damned biotics like him to second-class citizens, the smug and patronizing aliens who nonetheless showed all too human flaws, the offal of Earth that enlisted to escape mile-long rap sheets.

There'd been a time when it had been too much, when even consoling himself with the notion that every act of good he did canceled out another's act of ignorance wasn't enough. There'd been a time when he'd lain his gold bar on his superior's desk, and the captain with one eye on the milnet and a knowing smile on her face had told him to sleep on it. That night had brought with it official word of the Skyllian Blitz, of the horrifying atrocities perpetuated while Kaidan had moped, and of the other first lieutenant, the valkyrie named Shepard, who had emerged out the ashes of Elysium to save the entire colony. He'd fallen in at roll-call the following morning, his back straight as a pole, armor cinched down regulation tight, and that same gold bar polished and shining on his jumpsuit collar.

There was no doubt, Kaidan was standing here not-talking to Harrison only because of Shepard. He knew his slight hero-worship of her must have been annoying at first, but at least she had known how to handle it with calm and maturity, doubtless learned through years of experience as the "Hero of Elysium."

Pulled out of his reverie by a slap on the back from Harrison, the commander stood back up, handing the canteen back to its owner. Lilith and Sten had finished their chatter, the latter watching Kaidan with wary eyes.

"Bad news, Commander," Lilith said. "You know that power surge that happened while we were talking with Delan? It knocked out the comm tower—Sten was in the middle of a call to his sister back on Yandoa."

Flashing her a harried smile, Kaidan looked over at Harrison with a warning in his eyes. To the commander's relief, Harrison was already running a quick and subtle suit diagnostics check. Kaidan's mind whipped into action, considering the circumstances.

"Well Commander," Harrison said, watching the omnitool readings out the corner of his eye. "How long do you think it'll take them to start blaming that one on you?"

Kaidan replied, "I'd be surprised if they hadn't started already."

"People just don't like the Alliance out here, Commander, it's nothing personal." Lilith smiled apologetically, but Kaidan's mind was elsewhere, tracking the _Ain Jalut_'s schedule. Between 1000 hours and 1130 hours, diverting orbit to hover at Horizon's south magnetic pole for static discharge. Therefore, below the radio horizon. Therefore out of point-to-point transmission, meaning they'd be reliant on boosted signal bouncing to communicate.

Which was now impossible without the comm tower.

It was a weakness of this colony that Kaidan had already attempted to correct, but the locals' response to the marine's proposal had been as predictable as it had been stupid. Redundancy was always a good thing, but there had been no chance of talking down virtually the entire town. So, like any good marine, he'd planned contingencies, one of which he was putting into motion now.

"Excuse me Lilith, we have some work to do on the generator," Kaidan lied. When she made a disappointed sound and walked off, he looked to Harrison. "Well, now that we can talk, what do you have?"

Harrison's omnitool was dim and subdued in the morning sun as it spat out a program log. "The tower's back online, but one of the transmitting circuits looks to be burnt out for good. I think it took a full load of GARDIAN-strength capacitors, so I'm surprised the entire thing didn't go up in flames."

"Any sign of foul play?" Kaidan said as he drew up the program log for himself.

"Negative. This isn't anyone trying to cripple us. Looks like it really was just a damn power surge from whichever idiot tapped into the GARDIAN generators."

Tension bled away as Kaidan looked through the log and reached the same conclusion. It was anti-climactic, to say the least. He'd been preparing for weeks to intercept a Cerberus ground-party, and this, the communications black-out, had been one of the ways he'd seen the confrontation starting. He chuckled, chiding himself for his paranoia, and was about to crack a joke when Lilith came up behind him and asked, "Commander?"

"Yes Lilith?" he replied. Harrison was visibly struggling not to roll his eyes.

"I know I'm supposed to leave you alone, but I think there's something you ought to see." She gestured past the pre-fab building, and the two soldiers moved to follow her line of sight.

Kaidan noticed locals from across the town wandering over, all looking up into the sky. A towering bank of clouds had appeared, apparently in the last minute from the way they moved. They roiled and churned, flashing with brief arcs of yellow energy. A detached portion of his mind watched them move and concluded that they were boiling through the air at a blistering pace—far faster than weather was able to naturally change.

"The hell is that?" Harrison whispered. No sooner had he looked up, then his omnitool gave a flat beep, as though protesting a particularly offensive smell. "Uh, Commander? We're getting some growing fuzz on the communications channels. Whatever, whoever that thing is, they're trying to jam us."

More telling than that, however, was the sudden amplification of that dull pain in the back of his head. The migraines, only they weren't merely migraines anymore. He could only recall a scant few other times when this had happened, and as the clouds parted and revealed a strange rocky protrusion floating in midair, he realized that the stakes had jumped tenfold.

"Gunny!" he barked as he reached back and unhooked his helmet. "Seal up and get the colonists to the safehouse."

"Aye aye, sir." Harrison was quick on the uptake, and as he hurried off, Kaidan slipped his helmet over his head. Reaching back, he connected the power and oxygen cables, seating the shell comfortably on his head before triggering the hard-seals. In half a second, the lining inflated and sealed closed, the internal HUD flashed into existence, and the independent air supply activated as his armor instantly readied itself for combat. There was a visible crackle of energy as his kinetic barriers powered up and the suit discharged the static electricity into the ground. His rifle coming off his back and telescoping out to combat mode, Kaidan looked behind him where the HUD indicated someone was still standing. "Lilith, head to the safehouse with Gunny Harrison, this is no place for civilians."

"Commander, come with us!" she said.

"No time, I need to set up the emergency beacon. Go!" his voice brooked no argument, and Lilith dashed away as Kaidan glanced up and noticed a huge swarm of eezo readings, clearly marked by his armor. He didn't bother to raise his rifle, instead running for the pre-fab while recording a message into his omnitool.

"Scimitar, Artemis-Actual, priority alert, repeat, Scimitar, Artemis-Actual, priority alert. Horizon is under attack from unknown hostiles and is unable to mount effective defense. I am declaring Code Roswell, repeat, Roswell, authentication Alenko-Whisky-Delta-November-Seven." Flicking off the omnitool, Kaidan continued his mad dash for the pre-fab.

Something struck him in the back of his head. Kaidan flailed for balance as the object franticly clicked at the top of his helmet, and he reached up to grab it, bringing the offending object before his visor. It was an insect of some sort, but much larger, much stronger, than anything he'd seen. Even now, it was squirming, struggling to escape his grasp. With a swift clench, he crushed the thing, his armor slightly amplifying the effect, the bug's strange outer shell cracking and snapping in a grisly display of shattered chitin and viscous yellow fluid. Wires too. Obviously the thing had been cybernetically implanted with something, though the device's functionality was certainly impossible to tell now.

Another smacked into Kaidan's armor and futilely stabbed what could pass for a tail down at his chestplate. A swift palm turned the bug into a sparking, greasy stain, but another took its place, this one scrabbling upwards towards his vulnerable neck seal. They learned fast. Rather than attempting to swat this one, Kaidan raised both arms, slamming them together before him in a violent mnemonic, and the world turned blue. A cocoon of gravitic force wrapped around Kaidan's armor as he drew it in tight, warding off the encroaching insect. He stumbled twice more as a pair of bugs attempted to pass though. Throwing his arm out in a grand sweeping gesture, the biotic field he projected cleared out an arc of air before him, and he charged through, struggling to escape the center of the swarm.

"Harrison," he said into his helmet microphone. "Make sure whatever cover the locals get into is bug-proof."

No response. Biting off a curse, Kaidan spun and flung another biotic sweep behind him, dispersing a small swarm of the cybernetic bugs. Feeling more and more impacts against his barrier, Kaidan fired off a panicked burst with his rifle before turning to run.

He instantly vowed not to do that again as countless bugs, homing in on the mass accelerator signature, slammed into his barrier, some of them hard enough that they pulped themselves against his blue shield. Kaidan slung the firearm across his back, the magnetic slabs charging and holding the collapsed rifle in place. With both hands glowing blue, he jabbed and bulled his way through the swarm until he found himself face to face with the pre-fab in which he and Harrison had been stationed.

The door hissed open as he slapped his hand through the haptic display, and a cloud of the accursed insects flooded in while Kaidan dove through. Slamming the door shut, Kaidan crossed his arms once more before violently ripping them apart. At that command, his protective blue cocoon flew outwards, smashing the remaining insects, along with cups, plates, tools, and other assorted dross, into the walls and ceiling. The door buckled and jammed from the force of the impact. Releasing the barrier from his control, Kaidan sighed and fell to one knee as the blue field flickered and died. While the crushed cups and detritus clanked to the floor, he could feel his hairs settle, the build-up of static charge within his body finally dissipating into the ground as his suit recognized a lull in combat.

It had been months since his biotics had been tested so. Katas and gravitic sparring were one thing, full on combat was another entirely, and Kaidan began running through his observations a mile a minute. They were insects of a sort he'd never seen before, cybernetically modified and apparently controlled by a sentient intelligence—the swarms had wheeled and flown as one, not as a loose amalgamation of creatures with similar reflexes. The alacrity with which they'd learned his armor was impenetrable to their stingers was frightening; it indicated intelligence and cunning behind the mind of the swarm's controllers, and already Kaidan feared Harrison and the colonists had been overrun.

"Harrison, this is Alenko. Harrison, come in," he said, keying his comm and sweeping aside what little odds and ends remained on the desk. "Harrison, do you copy?" Still no response.

He found what he was looking for a moment later, switching on the emergency beacon. Fiddling with its controls, he dumped the message recorded on his omnitool into the buffer on the beacon and then set it on the ground by the ruined door. Outside, the air was black with bugs as they circled around the sealed pre-fab. The beacon's indicator blinked red, screaming its message out into the deceptively beautiful mid-morning sky, completely clear save for the towering orange cloud where a frightful cylindrical spaceship was slowly lowering itself down to Horizon's surface, yellow lightning arcing off in fantastic rays of energy.

For a brief moment, Kaidan thought himself safe.

A loud bang dispelled that notion, and he looked up as his suit identified more of those damned bugs swarming into a dense knot of fluttering wings. They took aim at one of the windows and slammed into the tempered glass again, spreading spider-web cracks across the entire surface. Stepping back into a rather formal biotic stance, Kaidan drew his right hand across his chest, readying a high-velocity strike as the black ball of insects readied itself for one final ram.

They both lunged at the same instant, the swarm bearing down angrily upon the fractured glass, Kaidan's clenched fist preceding him as he broke into a sprint.

He reached the window first. Timed exquisitely, the biotic strike shattered the glass outward even as the swarm attempted to smash it in. The whipping fragments sliced apart countless bugs, and the swarm flew into disarray amidst a spray of yellow and orange ichor; Kaidan leaped through the center of the shattering glass, flinging up a barrier in time to avoid flailing stingers, and landed on the ground, rolling to the balls of his feet as he launched himself into a sprint, blue shield swirling in the air around him as more and more swarms of the infernal insects descended upon the fleeing marine.

More important though, was a beam of coherent light lancing through the air. Diffusing as it slipped right through both biotic and kinetic barriers, it struck his torso almost dead center, boiling away a layer of ablative armor with a sickening sizzle. A cloud of vaporized ceramic smoke sprayed into his visor as Kaidan roared in surprise, identifying his attacker and snapping out his hand. A biotic field pinned the hapless enemy in place, and the commander sidestepped out of the path of the energy beam. Drawing his hand back, he yanked his assailant off its feet and pulled it towards him with a cloud of gravitic force. Whipping forward with anger and fear amplifying his strength tenfold, his fist glowed a brilliant blue, and as the insectoid figure drifted closer, Kaidan surged in and let loose. His fist connected with the creature's head, and an unfettered biotic pulse rampaged down his arm, smashing the unidentified opponent into the ground where it lay, twitching.

Panting from the exertion, Kaidan looked down at the crushed corpse at his feet. Almost instantly he recalled various intelligence briefs, from InOps operatives on Arcturus, to an STG member taking part in an intercultural exchange, to Lieutenant Phillips aboard the _Ain Jalut_. Collectors. Those enigmatic insectoids from beyond the Omega 4 relay. Why were they here? What were they doing here? And where the hell did they get directed energy weapons?

All those questions and more passed through Kaidan's mind, but were shunted aside by the buzzing arrival of two more collectors. They landed, their strange chitinous limbs raising strange chitinous weapons, and Kaidan dove for cover. Traditional mass accelerator fire flashed overhead and hammered into the low garden wall he'd ducked behind. Rock chips flew up as he drew an electronic warfare grenade from his belt, priming the device with his omnitool while his other hand reached for his rifle.

In one smooth motion, Kaidan pivoted to one knee, flinging the grenade overhead and spraying unaimed mass accelerator fire out towards the advancing collectors. Stray rounds skipped off kinetic barriers as the creatures chittered, one ducking behind the corner of a pre-fab, the other slipping behind a thick tree. As expected, a vortex of the accursed cybernetic insects spiraled down, attracted once again by the mass accelerator signature. This time though, they dove into a small electromagnetic pulse, the EW grenade detonating in their midst and frying their unshielded circuitry. Kaidan's suit systems flickered for a brief moment from the proximity of the electronic blast, and the charred remains of insects collapsed to the ground around him, sizzling and twitching on the dirt and grass. Above them, more swarms circled around with an angry buzz, wary of another ambush.

Raising his rifle to his shoulder, Kaidan gripped it with both hands, drilling mass accelerator rounds into the native Horizon tree. As expected, the collector behind it stumbled into the open, its barriers sparking from the rounds passing straight through the hardwood. Kaidan placed another burst on target, stripping away the collector's shields as the panicked creature sprayed return fire towards the commander. A single mass accelerator round struck his kinetic barriers, flickering as the mass effect fields arrested its momentum and dropped it safely to the ground, a speck of sand lost in the dirt and grass.

The rifle came up again and fired. Small flowers of orange ichor blossomed up and down the collector's chest as the hypervelocity rounds tore through the insectoid flesh, and the creature dropped to the ground like a discarded ragdoll. Its wingman wheeled out of cover and sprayed Kaidan, its rounds tearing and clawing at the commander's kinetic barriers, sparking as the capacitor readings on his helmet's HUD dwindled. Ducking back down into cover, Kaidan dashed into a nearby pre-fab that had been turned into a communal dining hall, priming another grenade and slipping it onto the ordinance rail attached below his rifle. He watched the heat indicator on his weapon while it cooled in the morning air, and then leaned out a window, triggering the ordinance rail.

With an electric whine, his weapon flung the grenade out into the open, where it detonated in a blast of electric fervor, the EMP washing over the second collector. Raising its rifle, the alien pulled its trigger, looking puzzled when the weapon sputtered and died. That puzzled look was wiped off the collector's face by a barrage of mass accelerator rounds, the first twelve stripping away the collector's barriers, and the last five or so ripping apart the alien's head.

A sudden series of impacts threw Kaidan forward, and he launched himself off his feet to dive through the window. Rolling to a crouch amidst a bed of azaleas, he fired back through the window at a collector who had flanked him through the kitchen door, mass accelerator rounds chewing at the collector's shields as the alien continued to pound away at the commander's own barriers. His suit abruptly spat in protest and the kinetic barriers died, at which point his biotic barrier, much weakened since he had activated it, flickered and warped, protesting the punishment coming his way. Coming to his feet in a mad sprint for breathing space, Kaidan felt more than saw another collector to his left. A snapshot from his rifle missed the alien, ripping up the façade of a toolshed instead, and the collector returned fire with another of those damned energy beams.

Armor sizzling under the searing heat, Kaidan knocked a glowing red heatsink out of his rifle, flinging out a desperate biotic strike while the collector advanced relentlessly, burning away millimeter after precious millimeter of ablative armor. The blue bolt of biotics struck the collector in the center of its torso, but barely rocked the alien as it countered with its own biotic push, taking its energy beam off target long enough for Kaidan to slide behind a rock and bring up an overview of his armor. The glowing holographics showed significant damage to both front and back ablative layers, with one almost completely burnt through. His kinetic barriers were struggling to re-initialize themselves. Activating his suit's emergency reserves, Kaidan counted to three while the capacitors whined and dumped their power into his kinetic barriers, recharging them to full. He crossed his fatigued arms, summoning as powerful a biotic shield as he could muster, before turning and firing three quick bursts from the fresh heat sink.

The first burst missed. The second and third sank dead center into the beam wielder's barrier, the shielding absorbing the potentially deadly grains of hypervelocity metal. The energy beam lashed out again, brushing past Kaidan's cover and flashing overhead when he ducked down. Grains of metal slammed into the far side of the rock as Kaidan struggled to reinforce his biotic barrier, only to have it ripped apart by a near-miss as a third collector emerged from a pre-fab before him.

There were simply too many of them. Kaidan was one of the most talented soldiers the Alliance had turned out, true. He was in serious consideration for Spectre status to replace his mentor, his lover, his Shepard, also true. He was among the tragically tiny group of L2 biotics that had been able to make good use of their immense power and ability, yet again true. Most importantly though, he was just one man, caught in a deadly crossfire without a wingman to cover his six. His rifle beeped, the heat sink having reached 115% rated capacity, and he tossed it aside, drawing his pistol and a grenade with resigned efficiency.

The collector that had come up behind him was stunned by the point-blank detonation of an electrostatic grenade, the arcs of electricity coursing through its cybernetics, shattering its compound eyes in a grisly nightmare of yellow ichor. As it fought past the commands issuing forth from its ruined cybernetics and clawed at its face, Kaidan put the thing out of its misery with a single mass accelerator round that cored the insectoid's head.

The commander glanced around the rock, charting a path to the nearest building that looked like it could be sealed for just a brief half-minute; a barrage of mass accelerator rounds answered him and sprayed his helmet with rock fragments for his trouble. Twenty meters from the rock to the doorway. He exhaled a fit of breath, steeling himself for what was to come.

Spinning up and around, he squeezed the trigger, snapshots glancing off barriers, one of them dropping a collector to the ground without an arm. The aliens ducked in and out from behind pillars, doorways, windows, firing away, slowly depleting the commander's shields as he ran for the doorway. A beam of light lanced out and drilled into his side armor, the heat dully apparent through the mesh of his jumpsuit. More pistol fire drove that collector to ground, and Kaidan continued to run for the door, muscles and element-zero nodes burning from exertion and fatigue.

"Fifteen meters, ten meters," he whispered to himself as he ran, mass accelerator rounds striking his shielding as he returned fire as best he could. "Five meters."

_Thud_.

A weight slammed into the back of his neck, driving him down into the dirt path. His helmet scratched and squeaked against stray pebbles and rock fragments as he slid, his momentum continuing to drive him forward until he slid to a halt an arm's length from the door, mass accelerator fire flashing overhead and digging divots into the pre-fab's side. "No, no!"

Blinding pain. A sharp bite shot pain through his neck, and Kaidan's element-zero nodes screeched in white hot agony as a thick burning serum sprayed into his veins. It raced through his system, his heart involuntarily speeding up in a vain attempt to clear away the poison. He could feel the serum at work, freezing nerves in absolute paralysis. With the last semblance of voluntary movement, Kaidan reached up and snagged the insect that had darted down and stung his neck in his moment of distraction. Its image swam before his eyes, a nasty needle-like stinger thrusting in and out of its tail, dripping a violent purple liquid that pulsed with a frightening white glow. His fist tightened and then froze lifelessly, crushing the insect as more and more landed on his vulnerable joints, neck, and anywhere else uncovered by his ceramic armor, ready to sting if the human showed any sign of resistance.

He didn't.

More and more collectors landed around him, their weapons trained and charged, wings folding from flight. One drifted in, flesh burning and trailing smoke as it spoke in a menacing voice. _"This one is powerful. He shall make a potent addition to this batch of ascendants. Prepare him for transport."_

The burning one leaned close, flames licking at its forehead as Kaidan spotted cybernetic augmentations within of a kind he knew all too well. _"Worry not, human. Your contribution to this galaxy's salvation will be as glorious as it is necessary."_

The day had started out so well. Feeling insectoid hands grasp his arms and legs to carry him off, Kaidan knew it probably wouldn't end quite so happily.

**

* * *

Codex Entry: Code Roswell**

Contrary to popular belief, the Systems Alliance is not standing idle by after the horrific events of 2183.

After the decimation wrought on the Fifth Fleet at the Battle of the Citadel (publicly blamed on the Geth) the Systems Alliance Military reinstated Code Roswell, an old emergency condition predating first contact with the Turians. Originally meant to signal contact with an alien race, Code Roswell now signifies something far more sinister and, in its current iteration, supersedes even the Mayday code in importance, one of the key factors regarding its secrecy.

Code Roswell now alerts the entire Alliance command structure to a Reaper-related threat; due to the severity of this alert, the ability to declare a Code Roswell is granted only to O6 Captains or higher. A special dispensation has been made to many surviving crewmembers of the _SSV Normandy_ due to their close encounter with Reaper technology and assets, and each crewmember who is considered a qualified observer has been put through basic special forces training and reassigned secretly throughout the Alliance fleet. Numbering twelve in total, these former disciples of Shepard act as the Alliance's eyes and ears in regards to the Reapers. Chief among them is Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko, now classified N7 and in the running to become humanity's second Spectre agent.

**

* * *

Author Notes:**

Yes, these heat sinks can either be discarded and replaced by another in the tube magazine for a nearly un-interrupted stream of fire, or they can be shepherded like the first game's heat-sinks until they radiate what heat they've gathered.

There was one thing that greatly irked me about my Mass Effect 2 experience. In both my playthroughs, Kaidan was the one who survived, but in the introductory cutscene to Horizon, he goes down like a punk, never thinking once to use his biotics. It's patently obvious that the scene in question is designed as though Ashley had been saved on Virmire.

In terms of voice, Bioware wrote Kaidan with a voice incredibly similar to my default, therefore consider this the "base-line comparison" with which to measure everything else to.

Also, biotics are so much rarer than the game lets on. In game, you'll face something like two-hundred human biotics in the course of the whole shebang. There likely aren't many more than two-hundred viable human biotics from the first three or four "accidents" alone, and the odds of a parent saying, "Ooo, industrial accident, I want my baby to have a 90% chance of developing horrible cancer while in the womb!" are rather… low.

~ Ferrard


	3. Landfall: Various

**Chapter Two: Landfall**

The _Normandy_ was waking up.

Nautical literature always mentioned crew aboard waterborne vessels knowing of the ships rhythm or its heartbeat, but none of them really knew like she did. She felt the vibrations of soles on pressure sensors, the miniscule, ticklish power-draw as Kenneth and Gabrielle initiated the game of Dreadnaught they thought was surreptitious, the palatable change in the tenor of the air as the graveyard shift wandered into the sleep pods freshly vacated by the morning watch.

EDI never understood it, but humans were still tied inextricably to their peculiar rhythm of days and nights, even if they were a member of the small contingent of homo sapiens who were born and raised outside a planetary atmosphere, gravity well, or day cycle. Technically, the three shifts were identical eight hour periods, and the fifty-odd crewmembers aboard were split relatively evenly across them, but greater import was always placed on the morning and afternoon watch. At "night," EDI's observation logs always stagnated, leaving her to calculate primes, run through procedurally generated virtual 5D mazes, or simply predict star movements through the blue-shift of FTL travel, constantly updating the _Normandy_'s navigational charts.

Night was boring, and EDI welcomed the arbitrarily-designated dawn.

* * *

The knife was silvered steel, with a five-and-a-quarter inch long blade. Its cutting edge was ornamented with small rills in the carefully forged metal, a pithy Japanese saying engraved into the rosewood handle. Rupert's mother had handmade it herself for the mess sergeant those seven years before, a last gift for her then-grieving son. The meticulously folded and tempered blade had little dulled in those seven years of reverent use, and the polite clicking of its edge against the cutting board echoed through the nearly empty mess hall. Mincing green onions and freshly clipped basil from hydroponics, Rupert neatly squared off the chopped herbs, looking up when the first customer of the morn emerged from her den.

As usual, it was Miranda. Every day the lady exited her office and strode up to his kitchen a half-past four each morning. Every day, she would take one serving of whatever he had cooked for breakfast, one high-calorie energy bar, and one serving of fruit—usually a peach, but sometimes Rupert put a pear on her tray just to shake things up a bit. This was one such morning. The striking woman eyed her tray carefully as Rupert topped her omelette with a sprig of rosemary.

"G'mornin' ma'am," Rupert said, offering up the laden tin. As usual, she replied with a perfunctory "Sergeant," that precluded any other attempts at socialization, and so another days routine played out like clockwork. She walked away, pre-arranged tray in hand, leaving Rupert to sprinkle chopped ingredients into his mixing bowl, whipping them in as her office door closed, and the queen returned to her icebox, inscrutable as ever.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the tray sat neglected on the corner of Miranda's desk, contents washed out in the harsh orange light of a haptic interface while the woman typed furiously.

_Niket,_ the message read. _Thank you for notifying me of Father's intentions. Orianna is my twin sister—genetically. She was three weeks old when I left, and, well, I just couldn't leave her with my father. You know how he is. Orianna would never have been anything but a tool for him._

_I'll admit, a part of me wanted to do this for selfish reasons, wanted to deny my father his trophy. One last curse to throw at the old man. He may have wanted a perfect woman, but I'm only human. Still, I like to think she's happier in the life she has than she would ever have been as Father's pawn._

_I hope this message will find you well. Take care Niket._

_Miranda_

With an acquiescent bleep, the message loaded up to EDI's buffers and vanished into the ether. Miranda's hands settled in her lap, clenched tight, glowing a faint blue. Her eyes bored straight ahead,

"Okay Father," she breathed. "You want to play."

Biotic aura fading from sight, Miranda stood, tugging her white skinsuit tight and formal. "EDI, set up a communication with The Illusive Man at his earliest convenience."

The AI's voice was quick to respond. "The Illusive Man was connected via quantum entanglement device three minutes ago, Operative Lawson."

"By whom?" Miranda asked.

"Commander Shepard is—"

"Damnit!" Miranda muttered as she stormed out of the room.

"—currently speaking with him," EDI finished. The door had already closed.

* * *

The AI caught up with Miranda again as the woman entered the shipboard elevator. "Operative Lawson, why are you in distress?"

"I don't want to talk about it, EDI."

Again with the reticence, the obvious desire to escape EDI's perceived local presence, the distrust of a seemingly omniscient, bodiless electronics being. One of those human quirks—actually, apparently common across all species now that she'd had the opportunity to observe Mr. Vakarian and Professor Solus. Still, EDI couldn't shake that nagging tug at her motive core. Miranda was displeased, and EDI couldn't figure out how to ameliorate said displeasure.

Greater frustration stemmed from the fact that EDI knew what Miranda was upset about, and Miranda knew that EDI knew. It had taken barely a day for EDI to realize that people did not like knowing that EDI knew so much about them. Learning to slow her responses down for the benefit of the organics had taken longer, and even still they would occasionally look at her strangely, put off by the instantaneous response to the question they'd just finished posing.

Yet another reminder of EDI's loneliness to peck at her mind for the next two-thousand-seven-hundred-twenty-eight cycles before Miranda would be comfortable with a response.

Her motive core lit up in delight as she reached the end of five-dimensional maze #827 and sent off another seed to be generated by the strange sectors behind the Cerberus blocks. Twenty cycles passed before the strange dog spat out a new maze into her brain and EDI gleefully began running into the walls. She anticipated the first three turns perfectly. Soon she would need to randomize the procedural generation again, lest the mazes become predictably boring.

"EDI," Shepard said two rooms over and one deck up. "Page Jacob and Garrus to the armory. Miranda too."

EDI began relaying Shepard's instructions in the same nano-second.

* * *

"Operative Lawson," EDI said. "Shepard requests your presence in the armory." EDI said to Miranda as the doors closed and the lift started.

"Very well, EDI." Yet another impediment, another reason for the perfect woman's frustration. This was one of the most important parts of her life, and Shepard had to get in her way. Talking directly to The Illusive Man at that! Miranda had been uneasy letting Shepard even get a glimpse of The Illusive Man before Freedom's Progress, but now the Commander had the gall to speak directly to him, like she was an insider. Like she was Miranda.

"I have received no notification that we are to regard Shepard as a threat to Cerberus,"

"She's not. She's our ally."

"Why do you not trust her, then?"

There were plenty of reasons. Few of them good. "Her past record suggests that she'll become a threat to Cerberus the moment we cease to be of use to her," Miranda said, "perhaps even before."

Miranda had done her research. While Shepard's burnt and battered husk of a body had lain in cryogenic stasis, the perfect woman had studied the Commander's Alliance file, obtained through methods unknown but whole and complete in its entirety—no thoroughly blacked out mission reports, no hidden reasons for public commendations. Only the best for Cerberus. Only the best for Miranda.

What she found had horrified her. _This_ was humanity's best hope? An arrogant special forces bitch who had cold-bloodedly gunned down Cerberus researchers, _civilian_ researchers, and was singlehandedly responsible for the complete eradication of the Davinport cell and all of its incalculably valuable research data. The Illusive Man had been unreceptive. _Yes_, had been his answer, and he'd left it at that.

Worse than that, however, were the attached mission reports. Miranda had heard of the Davinport cell. It was hard not to hear names as The Illusive Man's right-hand woman. She'd known its purpose. She'd never known its methods. They'd been appalling. Necessary, yes, but extremely distressing nonetheless. Experimenting on colonists. Leading researchers to what was later revealed to be reaper tech, just to study the effects of prolonged exposure.

She couldn't help but feel disgusted, ashamed of herself. This was her allegiance. This was what she permitted to occur. She'd never brought it up with The Illusive Man. Never betrayed the confidence of her conscience, for it _had_ been necessary. What little data remained after Shepard cleaned house was invaluable information in light of the myriad threats against humanity. That didn't mean she felt any better about it or expected Shepard to simply forget that shameful business—the former was her own personal burden, but the possible consequences of the latter were impossible to ignore.

"I do not agree with your threat assessment, Operative Lawson," EDI said. "From records released to me by The Illusive Man and yourself, Shepard has shown considerable restraint towards all she meets." The AI, as usual, spoke infuriating truths. "Unless they shoot at her first," EDI added unhelpfully.

"Nevertheless," Miranda said. "Shepard spent years working against Cerberus before Sovereign showed up. It's difficult for me to see her setting aside that ingrained prejudice. You've seen the way she treats the Cerberus crew." Miranda's silent addendum was unspoken, hopefully unnoticed by the AI.

The elevator came to a halt, and EDI spoke with unexpected tenderness. "Shepard is capable of great compassion and understanding. You say so in your own reports. She is categorically unlikely to turn upon men and women she has spoken with, however hostile her attitude may be."

"I don't need you to coddle me," Miranda snapped as the doors opened. "I know what my reports say."

"Very well, Operative Lawson. Logging you off."

"EDI acting up?" Jacob leaned against the CIC railing, arms folded, eyes blinking away the last vestiges of sleep.

Miranda walked past, heels clicking on the metal. "Why up so early, Jacob?"

"Shepard just put the call in," Jacob said, falling in behind Miranda as she passed. "Something big's going down."

"Any clues?"

"Other than a wild ass guess? No. I'd say another colony got hit, but something must be different this time, otherwise it wouldn't be this urgent."

Jacob shrugged, palming the door to the Armory to reveal Garrus, seated next to the fabricator, with a mostly disassembled sniper rifle spread on the ground around him and a second leaning against the table nearby. He had paused in the middle of a sentence, eying the Cerberus operatives carefully before closing his mouth and returning to his task. Left mandible flickering back and forth, he lightly oiled a thick, weighty barrel, sliding it back into position and twisting it tight against the upper receiver until it gave an audible _click_. Miranda had seen many men develop an attachment to their weaponry, and Garrus was no exception, having traced his rifle in ceremonial ink not dissimilar from the face-paint on his metallic visage.

The other rifle was unassuming, bland, only recently fabricated. A blank slate, but one already forging its own story, a tale of insurmountable odds and unquestionable resolve. Its first kill had come with its first bullet, its owner's skill having abated very little in two years of suspended consciousness.

Shepard herself reached down and grabbed the Helix. It collapsed at her command, latching onto the magnetic rail of her hardsuit when she slung it over to join the assault rifle already biding its time on her back. Almost instantly, Miranda could see the commander's mood improve, an old, reassuring friend of the Commander's back in place. An older model, one that they'd had to dig into the archives for specs in order to fabricate, but it had served Shepard well in her previous life, and it would continue to do so now.

"Jacob, Miranda," Shepard said. "Glad you could join us."

Miranda nodded acknowledgement; beside her, Jacob snapped off a precise salute. Habit. Something he never did for her. But jealousy was unbecoming, and the perfect woman subsumed it with business.

"What have you got for us, Shepard?" she said. Garrus flicked a mandible sharply to the left and snapped his rifle's last component into place, earning a disapproving look from Shepard.

The commander reached over and picked up her helmet, a practical matte grey and blue digital camouflage having recently been painted over the "shoot-me-now" Cerberus colors. Slinging the helmet to her hip-slung carrier, Shepard looked up.

"Your boss had some interesting information for us," she said.

"You talked with The Illusive Man?" _Alone?_ was the unspoken word echoing in Miranda's head.

Shepard nodded. "He's certain he's found the collector's next target. The colony of Horizon in the Iera system has gone silent, and we're to go and pay a visit, maybe drive off the collectors before they can live up to their name."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am," Jacob said. "But how exactly are we supposed to do that?"

Shepard replied, "You know the marines. We make do." At Garrus's chuckle, she continued, "We know they get the colonists off the planet somehow. Maybe a small group of ships that can transit planetside, considering there's no burn-marks at their previous targets."

"These are the Reaper's we're working against here," Miranda cautioned. "And the collectors have only been seen in cruiser-sized ships like the one that ambushed the first _Normandy_."

Jacob said, "But a ship that large can't take off from atmo without liquefying some square kilometer of ground."

"Sovereign could," Miranda said.

"But—okay, I guess that makes sense."

"What other information does The Illusive Man have?" Miranda asked. "Any idea what we'll be facing?"

Shepard shook her head. "We've got a place and we've got a mission. Everything else is up to us. I thought that's what you liked about Cerberus."

"True. Still. We need a better idea of what we're up against," Miranda said. "So what's the plan, Shepard?"

* * *

"The plan is simple," Shepard was lecturing them like schoolboys. She gestured towards him, "Zaeed, Mordin, you're advanced team with me. We'll land forward with the Hammerhead and recon the area. The rest of you are going to take the shuttle to this hill just outside of town, and you're going to wait for my order. We don't know how the collectors are going to respond to our intervention, but we can bet they won't be happy, so be prepared to come in and save my ass."

The levity was lost to the tension. Zaeed listened to the girl prattle on while he chewed on his cigar—a big, beefy thing from Earth itself—and bemused himself with a throwing knife. All around him, eyes shifted from person to person. That man Taylor kept watching him like a hawk. The nutjob biotic who'd messed up his leg on Purgatory was perched in the corner of the room, apparently quite paranoid about everyone else. He would be too if he'd been relying on a bunch of stupid tattoos and psychic powers to save his skin.

Archangel—Zaeed forgot the turian's real name—was watching too. The reptilian eyes played over everyone, and the mandible flickers might have been harder to read had Zaeed not spent hours cooped up in a damn ventilation shaft the last time he'd been aboard a turian cruiser. Reading alien body language had saved his life then, and although not as important now, it was nonetheless useful. Turians faceplates were strange, semi-malleable but rigid, and so they relied on an almost microscopic quivering of their mandibles in order to show emotions. Right now, Archangel was radiating absolute loyalty and extreme distrust. The former for Miss Shepard, the latter for everyone else.

Miranda was a piece of work. Gorgeous body, but cold eyes. No chance of anyone melting them. They'd tried to spear him through a few weeks before when she'd cornered him in the cargo hold. Lot of bark in that girl, but most of it was bravado of the sort Zaeed had seen before, mostly from incompetents who didn't want anyone to know just how incapable they were. Still, this was the lady signing the check, so he'd pretended to be cowed, listened to her instructions, and filed them away on a checklist.

The one that really fascinated the grizzled merc was the self-titled Grunt. A real beast of a week-old Krogan. The monster was tramping up and down the conference room, stopping here and there to sniff at someone. The thing had walked over earlier, sniffed at Zaeed's armor once, making the merc reach for a knife, then retreated, some measure of grudging respect in the dinosaur's eyes. Okeer was one thing. Zaeed had dealt with that bastard's xenophobia and superiority complex before. This whelp was far stranger. Okeer's intellect, distilled and inexplicably softened, then dumped unceremoniously on this teenager. The little bastard didn't even have a hump yet and he was still intimidating.

A deft touch pried something off his armor, and Zaeed spun around in a furor. "Hey! Don't touch that!" he growled, interrupting Shepard's lecture. It was Mordin, holding one of the shield capacitors that was normally supposed to be strapped to his belt.

Zaeed snatched it back even as the salarian nodded to himself. "Leave my shit alone, lizard. There's parts of this armor older than you."

"Not likely," Mordin countered instantly. Zaeed grumbled as he turned back towards the briefing table and Shepard's annoyed glance. Let her be annoyed, the damn salarian should have known better than to mess with his armor.

As though taunting him, the lab-coat clad scientist touched his armor again, this time leaving something hooked up to the back-mounted radioisotope battery. It completely ruined the balance of his rig, a carefully adjusted variation on the antiquated Alliance SALEH system. "Oi, what'd I just tell you, shit for brains?"

"Assumed your preference to not be collected in first five minutes. To that end, have designed and installed black box countermeasures on all human armor. Observe." With that, Mordin retrieved a small canister from his belt, uncorking it in one swift motion.

"Holy shit!" Zaeed screamed as an enormous insect with a vicious needle extending out its tail rose and hovered rhythmically before him. "Get that the hell away from me!"

"Collector seeker harmless," the salarian insisted. "If within range of countermeasure, humans safe."

And indeed, the crazy little twit was right. The bug flicked its stinger in and out in midair and flew in eccentric circles, ignoring every single soul in the room. If he didn't know any better, Zaeed would have presumed the nasty little thing to be flat drunk from the way it weaved through the air.

Mordin was explaining, "Irregularly timed bursts of electromagnetic static disrupt seeker swarm's seeking mechanism in small scale experiments. Real test will come groundside. Communications may suffer from necessity of pan-frequency countermeasures. Team should take care when using tech weaponry. Disabling of black-boxes… inadvisable."

"Duly noted," Miranda snapped. "Now catch that thing before it stabs someone on accident."

Mordin frowned and flipped on his omnitool. "Very well." The haptic tool blazed blue for a moment and the cybernetic creature fell limp into Mordin's hand. "Pardon interruption, Shepard. Please continue."

"Right," the commander said. "At least we know the countermeasure works—should work."

The amphibian nodded to himself, and Zaeed caught a glint of pride Mordin's eyes. Obviously, pleased with himself, and the merc grudgingly admitted the strange scientist was certainly talented. Prying the black-box loose to shift its weight, Zaeed examined it in disaffected interest. Compact, dense, covered with some kind of ceramic material. It looked like an incredibly miniaturized version of a jamming device he'd seen back on Earth out in the African bush. He'd literally kicked that thing to pieces, it had been so shoddy. This jammer was obviously much more sturdy. A brief shake of the thing yielded no curious rattles or snaps.

"Everyone know your job?" Shepard asked to a chorus of affirmatives and one lackluster "whatever," and she finished, "Then go prep. We'll be hitting the relay at oh-seven-forty; I want everyone assembled in the cargo hold and ready to go at ten 'til.

* * *

The hum was getting to her. That persistent itch in the back of her head, about two inches below her bare scalp. No matter how much she scratched at it, it would dig deeper, taunt her with jeering cackles as she paced about her hidey-hole. Jack had forgotten just how fucking _annoying_ it was, but ever since she'd been flipped back on in the bowels of Purgatory, it had been there.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. First had come a full half-hour of the most glorious scratches and headrubs the world over, a ten-year eunuch given a new dick and locked in with all the girls at the whorehouse he was to guard. A full thirty minutes, give or take, of beautiful slaughter, the lemmings stepping up one by one to get smashed, hurled out the reinforced windows, minced into bits, filleted on the razor sharp edge of a splintered metal table. That feeling of power, the blood splattered everywhere, the omnipotent blue aura.

And then it was Cerberus. That logo etched like diamond into her mind, into her whatever-the-hell-emotion-gland that her creators had experimented with, and that quickly the joy of slaughter had vanished into panicked flight, the little girl inside screaming, fleeing the monsters, curling into a ball and lashing out at everyone and anyone near by in a frightened tantrum. It had been child's play for Shepard and her strange mish-mash squad to pick Jack up with her implant submerged under pure, raw, conditioned fear. The posturing, the access to files, it had been desperation, some last ditch attempt to retake control of her life at the very moment it was going to be ripped away yet again.

And the bitch had just given it to her. No deals, no threats, nothing. Just a simple, "Wait one moment—here you go," and Shepard had handed over the OSD like it was a particularly crappy half-smoked pack of cigs. It just didn't make sense. What the hell did Shepard have that made Jack's control meaningless?

Jack was crazy; this she knew. Crazy to be alive, crazy to be docile, crazy to be on this Commander Shepard's ship. It was Cerberus's operation, but something was off, and damned if Jack couldn't figure out what. Shepard didn't answer to them, except she did. The cheerleader was Shepard's boss, except she wasn't. They talked about this stupid "elusive man" as though it were an accomplishment to go unnoticed in this shithole of a universe, whoopdee-do, big fucking medal for the hidden jackass whoever he might be. He too was supposed to be Shepard's boss, except she didn't seem to agree.

"Jack?" Well speak of the devil, there she was.

"Yeah, what do you want?" Jack's face twisted into a crude snarl as she looked at Shepard.

The commander didn't miss a beat. "We're five minutes out and you're not up there yet. Get any gear you're bringing along and report to Garrus in the cargo hold."

The turian. At least Shepard wasn't asking her to be all buddy-buddy with the cheerleader. "We're five minutes out, I still got five minutes. I'll go up on my own sweet time."

"You planning on going out there naked, Jack?"

"The fuck do I need armor for? You remember why Cerberus made me, right? Most powerful biotic and all that shit? I don't need any fucking armor to kill."

"This is a military operation, not a bloodthirsty rampage," Shepard said. "Get your shit, get up to the cargo hold, and get fitted for a suit."

"Fuck you, lady," Jack said as jerked her left hand across her body. A biotic barrier slammed into existence, wreathing the convict in swirling blue. "Happy?"

Shepard stood before her for a moment. Finally, she turned away and said, "Good enough. Cargo hold. Now."

Grumbling invective, Jack reached up and adjusted the amp in her ear. It scrabbled at her brain, sending tendrils of unease down her spine as she watched Shepard walk towards the stairs, completely open. The back of Shepard's head stared Jack in the face, and the murderer could see a wave of blue pick Shepard up and dash her against the walls and ceiling until there was nothing inside that armor but a slurry of blood and broken bones. This supposed hero wasn't paying any attention at all. Candy from a baby. And then shooting the baby in the face. That's how easy it would be.

But it wouldn't be smart. Soldier with a stick up her ass though she was, Shepard hadn't stabbed her in the back yet. The knife had to be there, but Jack couldn't tell what it was, couldn't figure out how to avoid its inevitable retribution. For that matter, she couldn't figure out how to escape Cerberus if Shepard wasn't there to distract them from their prize. Maybe…

No. Shepard was too by-the-book. She'd never shoot Miranda in the face and then paint the walls with Jacob and anyone else who tried to stop her. So outright rebellion was out.

Which left nothing. Doing what Shepard wanted her to do. Doing what Cerberus wanted her to do. Submitting to their will.

_Fuck that_, she thought as she picked up a pistol and stuffed the folded weapon into the waistband of her pants.

* * *

"Hey Commander, aren't you supposed to be down in the cargo hold babysitting all the psychopaths?"

"Let's be fair, they're not all psychopaths. Besides, Garrus has it under control." A familiar hand rested on his shoulder as his fingers played across the haptic controls. "What've you got for me, Joker?"

"One big ass ship, that's what. The planet's surface is cold enough it's standing out like a torch." Three keystrokes splashed up a view of the colony, the tiny pre-fab buildings glowing like little uniform rectangles of white under the morning sunlight. In the middle sat a termite mound.

If only it were that benign. The Normandy's virus threw up a wireframe analysis of the ship, and already Joker saw its eerie similarity to that nightmarish murderer of the SR-1.

"What else?" she asked.

"You asking about… no. No hardsuit readings that we can see. Just that weak beacon." He watched her face as he said it. Nothing. Completely inscrutable.

Worrying.

"Any other ships in the area?"

"Negatory, Commander," Joker said. "There's a shuttle out near one of Prospects moons that the AI keeps getting backscatter from, but that's it."

"How close do you think you can get us without being spotted?"

"Hell if I know, Commander. To hear the tabloids, these guys are psychics who molest your grandmother."

"My grandmother's dead."

"You know that just makes it worse, right Commander?"

Joker could almost feel Shepard's exasperated bemusement as she patted his shoulder and said, "Just get us as close as you feel safe. Give us a good nap-of-the-earth vector into the main colony with the aero-vehicles."

The Normandy's virus popped back up to the left, and Joker steeled himself as the thing spoke and projectile vomited diagrams and far too many statistics to be healthy. "Topographic data indicates a ridge of dense rock to the east which can shield an aero-vehicle from notice. You can use this ridge to approach the main colony as close as one point seven three kilometers."

"Thank you, EDI," Shepard said. Joker turned to the commander, appalled at her betrayal; she grinned. "I'll go check how Garrus is doing corralling the psychopaths. Do as the possibly Reaper-infected AI says, Joker."

"Aye, aye Commander. Give Jack a kiss for me, 'cuz you know, since I'm committing suicide here, might as well make it spectacular."

* * *

If Garrus had to choose a word for how he felt about this mission, it would be grim.

The shuttle rocked in a fierce cross-wind as it free-fell out of the Normandy's cargo hold. The three people in back rocked as it plummeted with all the grace of a brick, Jacob rattling off altimeter readings as they dropped precipitously. Garrus's hands fiddled with the unfamiliar controls, visualizing the flying block of metal as it dove through the air in what was hopefully as stealthy an approach as they could manage.

"One-thousand feet!"

Garrus tapped a control panel to his right and abruptly the flight stabilized. The shuttle jerked back and forth as the piloting VI activated the shuttle's mass-effect field and fired its thrusters thousands of times in five seconds, and by the end of the impossibly precise evolution, Garrus leveled off the vehicle at a scant fifty feet. The display picked up the heavily masked signature of the _Normandy's_ Hammerhead pulling almost the same maneuver a klick-and-a-half to the north.

"Smooth moves, turian," Miranda said from the doorway. Garrus raised an eyebrow, clicking his mandibles together audibly and glanced over at Jacob, studiously examining an actual paper map of the landing zone.

"Miss Lawson," Garrus droned. "Shouldn't you be seated while we make the final run?"

The shuttle rocked as the VI bounced it over a ridge and down the other side. In the cargo compartment, Grunt jerked in his ridiculously over-sized restraints—they'd been jury-rigged into one of the seats barely ten minutes before the _Normandy_ had hit atmo when someone had reached the stunning conclusion that Grunt was… big. Jack was strapped in across him, staring a hole in the side of the shuttle while she rocked back and forth. Miranda, on the other hand, glowed blue for a brief moment and retained her footing even as the floor dropped away from her.

"Don't worry about me," she said before walking into the already cramped cockpit and leaning over Jacob's shoulder.

The man pointed towards two spots on the map and said, "We'll have a nice defilade against the center of town on this ridgeline here. This road gives us quick and easy access if the Commander calls us in, and we can hide the shuttle in these woods over here."

Garrus spared the map a sideways glance. "All right. Assuming most of the collectors are in the town, then we orient westward. Jacob, you're qualified on machine-guns right?"

"Yes sir," he replied.

"All right, we'll set you up on that outcropping with the revenant and—"

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Vakarian," Miranda interrupted. "Better to give it to the krogan and leave Jacob to help man the line. You'll go here on the other end and anchor the squad there with your rifle. The rest of us, the biotics, can hold the center."

His mandibles flickering in annoyance, Garrus nodded. "Your right, of course. My apologies, I tend to forget that you humans have biotics on the front lines like this."

"You'll find that we are quite capable," the woman continued. "Be ready to nail anyone we drive out of cover. Once we get out there—"

Jacob snorted. "Miranda, this is Archangel we're talking about. He's been around the block a bit; I don't think he needs The Talk."

"All right, Jacob," she said. "You'd best get ready. I can take over for you."

"Fine by me," he said, hitting the quick-release on his restraints and climbing over the seat. Miranda eased into it as Jacob hooked himself to a tether in the back.

Garrus watched her out the corner of his eye, concerned. The arrogance he could mostly excuse. She was, in fact, brilliant, having reached largely the same tactical decision as he, colored only by the difference in biotic doctrine between the Alliance and the Hierarchy as well as a greater trust of Grunt's stability. She was skilled as well, and had acquitted herself well in the battle on Omega. But she was a commando, not a soldier, and so he was concerned. She was too dainty, too concerned with nimbleness and tactics. He had little doubt this perfect human had never been forced into a fight of brute force and attrition.

Grunt was exactly the opposite. Garrus had no doubt that the krogan could hold his own in a match of brute force. He'd been in the room when Mordin had performed a battery of tests on the then-comatose Grunt and pronounced him to indeed be, "The perfect krogan, save for a genetic disposition towards asari gelatin deserts." Grunt's armor represented the absolute pinnacle of technology that Dr. Okeer could get his hands on. A full physical evaluation had determined that Grunt could likely lift an entire air-taxi over his head and crush a good sized refrigerator into so much metallic dross.

Unfortunately, the krogan was little more than a dangerous blood-knight. He ranted and raved constantly about the carnage and havoc he would wreak. Perhaps he might eventually be tempered to something that would fit into Shepard's team, but for now Grunt earned Garrus's wary eye. Giving him the biggest gun ought to pacify him for the time being, but eventually it would fall to Shepard to bring him in line. Wrex hadn't needed this handholding, experienced as he was with his near millennia of fighting under someone else's command. Ironically, Garrus found himself missing the abrasive battlemaster and his ingrained hatred of turians like himself.

And then there was Jack. All the trouble Shepard and her crew had gone to in order to secure her release, and the Illusive Man trapped the poor girl. Garrus had seen many miscreants like her during his tenure as Archangel, and it broke his heart every time. A normal boy or girl, deprived of a childhood, of a life, forced to fight and kill vorcha at the age of ten just to eek out a living, if their miserable existences could be called that. They invariably turned rotten, turned criminal, more often than not taking up with either the Blue Suns or Eclipse. Invariably, Garrus gunned them down with a strange mixture of pity and disdain.

Monteague had tried to explain it to him once, the hardship and adversity which were virtually impossible to fight on Omega. The lucky turned into criminals and guns-for-hire like himself. The unlucky turned into food. Either way, there was no way of leading a good life. It still struck Garrus as wrong though, wrong that they would choose to alleviate their own suffering by adding to that of others. Wrong that they couldn't take the burdens like a good person, was what he'd thought. Like a good turian, was what he'd meant, and it had taken a month for him to realize that.

Jack was a victim. No doubt about that. She was also a cold-blooded psychopathic mass-murderer, on that there again was no doubt. It wasn't her choice—that bit was debatable, but Garrus had to grant Shepard her point that he didn't know what he'd do if he had grown up a freak, a science experiment, tortured and beaten and raped.

Shepard was too trusting though. Jack would have been better confined to the ship. Even better, left on Purgatory to die a horrible gasping death with the rest of those monsters, both prisoner and guard. But the commander had given him an order. "Give Jack a job, something to do," had been her words. And if there was one person Garrus would take orders from, it was Shepard.

"El-Zee in thirty seconds," Miranda called out. "Get ready."

Garrus entered some last minute adjustments to the shuttle VI's piloting parameters and then handed control over to the program as Miranda left the cockpit to stand next to Jacob by the door. Grunt stood with a triumphant roar, inadvertently ripping his makeshift restraints out from his seat. Jack simply sat silently, staring past the sealed door. The VI beeped an acknowledgement to Garrus, and the turian turned and stood, making his way into the passenger compartment. His rifle came off his back and he flipped on his visor, the soothing blue display reappearing like an old friend.

"Ten seconds to landing," the VI said helpfully.

"Everybody ready?" Miranda shouted as the doors swung open.

Garrus ignored her. "All right, here we go. Five, four, three, two, one—NOW!"

The shuttle hovered to an abrupt stop, and all five of them jumped out as one, three out the right, two out the left. Garrus's rifle scanned the treeline, the visor highlighting and dismissing object after object until he shouted, "Clear!" and sent the VI its next cue. As he and Miranda simultaneously began directing people into position, the shuttle lifted off again from its low hover and eased itself into a small copse of trees where it landed and powered down.

The ridgeline was rocky, covered with scraggly, thorny brush. However unappealing it might look to rest in, though, it provided a perfect vantage point to look down into the town, pearl-white buildings glinting in the morning sun. The streets were filled with slow, sedate activity, strange insectoid figures dragging hovering pods through the streets, unsettling flying crabs ferrying bundles of the pods back and forth between the town center and a strange cylindrical tower on the edge of the spaceport.

"Apostle to Hunter," Garrus said into his radio. "Apostle to Hunter. Second team is groundside and moving into position now. Awaiting your orders."

"Apostle, Hunter," Shepard replied, her voice distorted in his earpiece. "We are groundside and proceeding to Rally Point Alpha. Be advised, there is a heavy collector presence in the town. They have husks."

Even on the far end of the ridge, Garrus could see Jacob tense from the news.

"Commander," the ex-marine said. "Are they… are we too late?"

Shepard was concise. "No."

Garrus keyed his radio. "Hunter, Apostle, I copy heavy collector and husk presence in town. What are your orders?"

"Apostle, Hunter. Establish your firing position and await further instructions. Hold fire unless discovered, and keep your heads down unless I say otherwise."

"Bunker down and await further instructions, understood. Hunter Actual, Apostle has not spotted any sign of the Roswell originator. Apostle out."

"What was that about?" Miranda asked as she brought her hand down from her earpiece.

"A private matter," he replied. "It won't affect the mission."

Garrus settled in and rested his rifle on a fallen tree. To his far left, Grunt grumbled about the lack of a lively reception, and in between, the three other members of the squad sat behind rocks and trees, weapons down, but ready. Already, all four of them were fidgeting restlessly, the relentless build-up of tension finding no suitable release now that they were here.

Garrus simply inhaled, exhaled, and steeled himself for the wait. The sun shined bright over his shoulder, and he gave the turian equivalent of a grin. Hurry up and wait. Such was the life of a soldier. He swept his rifle's scope across the entire town, then his mandibles fell open in shocked surprise.

That was no tower.

"Oh crap."

**

* * *

Codex Entry: Dilatant Armor**

After the defense of the Citadel and the Destiny Ascension by the Systems Alliance 5th fleet and Captain Anderson's elevation to Councilman, human relations with the Council races improved by leaps and bounds. One of the many positive results of improved trade relations was a cooperative venture between Systems Alliance researchers and a salarian chemistry firm, combining human and salarian knowledge bases to produce a cheap and durable dilatant fabric.

Now a staple material in civilian and law-enforcement grade protection, dilatant armor is little more than a sheet of cloth or light ballistic weave which has been treated with dilatant liquid, a mixture of silicates suspended in a polymer solution. The resulting fabric is as pliable as regular cloth during normal usage, but turns solid when exposed to sudden shearing forces such as the impact of a knife or a bullet. Popular among special forces units for its light weight and natural flexibility, dilatant armor is often combined with a high-capacity kinetic barrier in order to form a nearly impenetrable double-layer of ballistic protection roughly equivalent to a much less maneuverable and much weightier ablative ceramic hard-suit.

**

* * *

Author's Notes:**

Hard Sci-Fi / Tech savvy readers might easily spot the problem that Fem!Shep & Co. are going to face groundside. Look at the armor make-up of the group: Shepard, Garrus, Grunt, and Zaeed have real armor made of combined ablative plating and kinetic shielding. Miranda and Jacob have standard issue kinetic barriers, but in the interest of mobility and range of movement both are equipped with dilatant armor rather than ceramic hardsuits. Then there's Mordin and Jack, who have light kinetic barriers, and no armor to speak of. Perhaps Mordin's labcoat is also treated with dilatant liquid, which I certainly wouldn't put past him, considering how badass he is. Needless to say, the details from Kaidan's chapter means that the collectors aren't necessarily going to need a scion or praetorian to put some serious hurt on the squad.

At this point, I want to take a moment and acknowledge that no work exists in a vacuum. Some of you might have caught the Generation Kill reference near the start of the chapter, and I had a Firefly homage that didn't fit. Rest assured, it will show up in later chapters. In terms of influences, let it be known that I bow in awe before Peptuck and AssaultSloth, authors of Renegade and Interstitium respectively. They are twenty times the author I could ever hope to be, and if you haven't read their works, then you would do yourself a great disservice to skip over them.

More than likely, the next update is going to be a long time in coming. I have papers and short-stories I need to write up for college, and a work-in-progress RPG that I've been neglecting and should really contribute to for the friends who are putting most of it together. As always, leave any thoughts, comments, or random love if you would.

~ Ferrard


	4. Insurance: Commander Mordin Solus

**Chapter Three: Insurance**

With a sickening lurch, the Hammerhead slid out from the _Normandy_'s mass effect field and into Horizon's fierce upper level winds. The light armored vehicle shuddered and groaned as it freefell and the altimeter between Shepard and Mordin beeped impatiently.

The interior of the vehicle was cramped. No worse than any other skirmishing unit, certainly better than some of the STG's insertion vehicles—after all, this was a controlled descent. No, what made it cramped was the positively ancient armor worn by Mr. Massani where he sat in the gunner's cupola.

Silence from the mercenary. Obviously a bit frightened by the freefall, equally obvious displeasure with the way the ground mission looked to be shaping up. Not displeased with presence of aliens, unlike some members of the crew. Mr. Massani was merely indifferent. A twitch in his biological eye was indicative of minor neurological damage that seemed to manifest in times of stress, if the past three days were any indication. Presence of twitch only noted during heated situations, mainly matters of concern to him. Mordin's interference with suit arrangement, Miss Lawson's misguided attempt to earn his respect. Such a bad judge of character, that woman. Good enough to be confident, to be dangerous to herself, bad enough to be a liability. Point irrelevant to subject at hand. Twitch present. Mr. Massani nervous. Not of Mordin. Maybe of Shepard. Definitely of what's below.

The Hammerhead whined and rocked, the turbines screaming to life while the sparse contents of Mordin's stomach heaved from the shifting gravity. He felt the mass effect field establish itself and watched the display as Shepard leveled off the vehicle below the tree line.

The mercenary breathed a sigh of relief. "Glad that's over with."

"Not a fan of re-entry, Zaeed?" Shepard quipped.

"Not strictly speaking, no. Not when there's a chance we'll be pancakes if the nav system is off half-a-meter."

"I've had a whole two hours practice with this baby, you think I wouldn't be able to land it right?"

"On a simulator?"

"You bet your ass."

"It's a miracle we're still alive. Area's clear."

Good. Levity. Both humans obviously used to high-stress situations, accustomed to letting off steam. Black humor, Mordin's favorite.

"How's it look out there, Mordin?" Shepard asked as she guided the Hammerhead through the sparse forest. Recently planted trees flashed by to the left and right, their leaves reaching up past the top of the hovercraft.

The salarian pulled up readings on the datapad hooked to the atmospheric sensors and said, "Atmosphere is satisfactory, no major deviations from expected composition, no unidentified biological or chemical agents detected… no unauthorized leakage of methane on the _exterior_ of the vehicle."

"He who smelt it, lizard-brain," Zaeed growled.

"Radio signals?" Shepard glanced at the comm. panel.

"No," Mordin shook his head. "No radios, merely atmospheric hash and possible jamming of long-range communications. Might only be insect swarms, though."

"Like that damn bug you sicced on me?"

"Possible. Seekers already function via electro-magnetic sensory input, not outside realm of possibility they serve as somewhat inefficient jamming device as well."

"Great," Zaeed said. "So not only do these little bastards turn us into human popsicles, they keep us from calling for help when they get us."

"However, equally likely that native fauna present in large enough numbers to interfere with radio transmissions. Mating season."

"Wait, 'native fauna'?"

"Bugs, Zaeed," Shepard smirked in the corner of Mordin's eye. "Big, fat, honking bugs that could probably carry you off, armor and all."

Mordin grinned as the big, gruff mercenary shuddered and started searching around his harness. To his right, data collated on a spare console. "Shepard. During descent, vehicle passed through small portion of ionized air."

"I'm listening, Mordin."

"Ionization appears to have been byproduct of high-energy, low impulse propulsion device. Mixture of trace elements almost identical to samples collected by ground team and quarian expedition at Freedom's Progress, as well as subsequent Alliance investigation."

"You're saying that that ship," Shepard gestured at the frighteningly large cruiser inexplicably parked kilometers away on the surface of the planet, "Was the same one that attacked Freedom's Progress?"

"Ninety-three percent certainty," Mordin nodded.

"More important question," Zaeed said, spraying himself liberally with something clear and odorless. "How can that… thing, fly in atmo?"

"Already specified. High-energy, low impulse engine," Mordin said. "Depending on specific density of collector vessel, intellectually stunning mass effect core and field likely required to compensate for high exhaust velocity and corresponding thrust."

Zaeed had already tuned out. "English, you crazy lizard. Fucking English."

Shepard weaved the vehicle through the thinning trees as the ridgeline passed to the Hammerhead's right. "Gentlemen, we jump off in thirty seconds. Last call for drinks."

"Mmm," Mordin muttered. "Beverage _would_ be appreciated. Merely joking, yes?"

Lifting her eyes off the FLIR display, Shepard cast an incredulous look his way. "Yes, Mordin. Merely joking."

"Very well, will content myself with disappointment," the salarian said, feigning a sad sigh as he typed a sequence of instructions into his omnitool while watching a visual feed of the landscape. Slowly the pigments on his lab-coat melded from a garish white into a subdued mixture of earth-tones and lots and lots of tannish-brown.

"Well ain't that fancy?" Zaeed scoffed. The mercenary was watching him out the corner of his good eye while the turret tracked back and forth.

"What is that anyways?" Shepard asked.

"Basic optical camouflage," Mordin said. "Best model available to peaceful citizenry."

"Interesting. That thing's armored?"

"Correct."

"All right then," Shepard said as she slewed the Hammerhead to a halt under a rocky outcropping, nose out. "Dismount and secure."

Mordin was the first out, unlatching the passenger hatch, exiting, and sweeping his sidearm across the landscape all in one fluid motion. "Clear right, Shepard."

"Clear left," she replied on the other side of the vehicle. "Zaeed?"

An exasperated groan came from above Mordin's head, followed by a string of colorful curses, including a fairly well-pronounced salarian epithet. Finally, he settled down and simply said, "I'm stuck."

* * *

"Hunter Actual," Garrus's words came over their earpieces weak and tinny. "Apostle has not spotted any sign of the Roswell originator. Apostle out."

Mordin glanced backwards. At Shepard. Tension in carriage, flat, bored look in facial features used to disguise worry. Or maybe truly unconcerned. Hard to tell with Shepard. Always hard to tell with special forces.

"All right," she said behind him. "Scope them and tell me what you see, Mordin."

With a curt nod, Mordin slipped forward, mottled brown coat swishing over the underbrush as he slowly skirted the edge of the forest. Far enough away to be partially obscured in haze, the collector ship sat without a sound, pointing straight up into the sky. Nearer by, the first of the colony's pre-fab structures glowed white in the late-morning sun, and Mordin slowed and gently lowered himself to a crouch. A silent-adhesive pouch on the inside of his coat yielded a monocular which the salarian brought to his eye, pointed at the door in which they'd seen a collector and two husks venture.

The collector exited within a minute, hauling a stiffened body in a manner that would be comical except for the naked fear Mordin could make out in the man's eyes, even at this distance.

"Subject is in complete rigor, comparable to biotic stasis effect. Eyes are unaffected, subject is aware. Strange that eyes are unaffected. Desire to avoid permanent damage from prolonged unified muscle strain? Suggests extreme biochemical familiarity with human species."

Zaeed cut in. "Or maybe they're just sick bastards who want to make us see every last moment of helplessness."

"That's a thought," Shepard said. "How's our six look?"

"Boring," Zaeed said. "Not that that's bad."

Mordin continued unhindered. "Prior observations from Hill 218 confirmed, husks are dry, not, repeat, not recent conversions."

"Good," Shepard said. "Ought to cheer Jacob up a little."

"Taylor not an apparent candidate for post-traumatic-stress. Evidence of prior experience, but no warning signs at present."

"I wouldn't worry too much," Zaeed said. "Tough guy may not like me much, but he knows how to get the job done."

"You know, there are a _lot_ of husks," Shepard noted, having ignored the chatter. "Doesn't make much sense. They're not gathering the bodies, there's not much of a security concern, and shock troops aren't good for patrols anyways."

"Perhaps merely a practical matter," Mordin said. "Note leaner appearance comparative to husks on Eden Prime. Almost wholly cybernetic, very little organic matter remains. Machinery needs re-working, fine-tuning to compensate for changing mass and replacement of organic material. Absence of computer or similar processing device suggests this recalibration organic in nature. Refining instinct, rather than reprogramming for different parameters. Learning to walk again, if you will."

Shepard lowered her rifle. "Interesting. So this is their equivalent of walking a dog?"

"Walking a… ah, human idiom. Yes."

Zaeed mused, "If your dog was a bloodthirsty, cybernetic killing machine… okay, can't take the metaphor that far."

"Focus, Zaeed. Something isn't adding up." Shepard's visor flickered as she brought up files with her omnitool.

"Like what?"

"Mordin, all the data gathered at other disappearances. Were husks involved?"

"Prior disappearances suggested no involvement of cybernetic shock troops. First time seeing husks and collectors in concert. Lends further credence to theory that collectors are working for reapers. Still, very puzzling."

"So then, here's a question for you," Zaeed said. "Do they know we're coming?"

Shepard glanced at him. Her gauntleted hands tightened around her rifle, an angry flush creeping up her face. She shouldered her weapon. "I'm on point. Mordin, rear guard. Lets move."

* * *

"Mordin, get up here," Shepard called. The salarian finished scanning his eyes back across their barely noticeable tracks and turned towards the two pre-fab structures that constituted Rally Point Alpha, sitting maybe half-a-klick east of the central settlement. Overhead, seeker swarms buzzed to and fro, the combined sound of their wings beating down while they flew drunken circles in the air; not a one paid any heed to the two humans and salarian quietly moving forth. Rounding the corner, he eyed up the path, to where it curved behind a hill and led to Horizon proper. Nothing.

In the immediate area, however, quite a bit. Two pre-fabricated structures, riddled with bullet holes, shattered glass and charred insect remains carpeting the area in front of one of them. Specially tempered glass at that, rated to withstand atmospheric and meteorological forces of all sorts on any number of less pleasant worlds. As fine a material as engineers of any species could come up with.

More interesting that: discarded heat sinks. Several. Mordin picked one up, feeling residual heat radiate off the material. Standard issue Systems Alliance, lot number indicated a recent issue. Used within past four hours, no more recently than two if heat had faded to this point and not completely dissipated.

"Shepard," Zaeed said. "I got a corpse here. Looks like one of the collectors. Something mashed it up pretty hard; skull's completely caved in."

Mordin ambled over, trying to track the firefight that had trashed the area. Scorch marks here and there, bullet holes of all sorts. Impossible. Scientist, doctor, not ballistics expert.

"You are correct in assessment. Appears to have been biotic strike of significant force, almost on par with work of asari commandos or more experienced krogan battlemasters. Thought this colony to be xenophobic, mistrustful."

"It is. Was," Zaeed corrected himself. "Horizon. Home of those who don't want to be served drinks by blue-skinned space babes. Or don't want to look at blue-skinned space babes. Buncha whack-jobs."

"Zaeed," Shepard came up behind them. "Stop gawking and watch our backs. Mordin, There's a live one in that pre-fab." She gestured to the second building—the one with intact glass. "See what you can do for her and find out as much as you can. Five minutes. Go."

Mordin went, holstering his pistol. Behind him, he could hear Zaeed ask, "What's got you so tight-assed?"

"Shut the hell up and do your job, Zaeed."

"Aye, boss lady."

Inside it was just as Shepard said. Activating his omnitool with a swift calibrated gesture of his fingers, Mordin set about his task, narrating all the while. "Subject is young human female, age 14, appears descended from indigenous peoples of Indian sub-continent. Single needle mark in vicinity of external jugular vein. Subject is lucid," light in eyes with one hand, finger of other hand pressed into upper neck, "sluggish pupil response," pricking hand, "pain response present, but motion arrested, pulse… elevated. Breathing and pressure as well. Are you okay, miss? Subject unresponsive. Hmm. Symptoms consistent with those of exposure to biotic stasis. Very well, nothing to be done, effect will wear off in due time. Six hours or so from time of exposure. Maybe longer depending on level of dosage. Will lock door behind while leaving. Lights on or off? Blink once for on, twice for off." One blink. "Leaving lights on. Good day."

The door hissed shut behind him and a lock audibly _thunk_ed into place. Zaeed was sitting on the limb of a tree, his orange armor actually blending somewhat against the foliage. His pose might have been that of indifference, but his eyes were darting back and forth. The twitch was still there. Good. Something… wrong in this place. Not sure what. Scrabbling at the back of his mind.

In the other pre-fab, Mordin found Shepard knelt with her back to the door. Without turning, she pointed at a small emergency beacon by his feet.

"Since you're here, reconfigure that. Needs to link into a unidirectional X-band transmitter."

Mordin picked up the beacon as it blinked strong and steady. "Beyond my technical expertise, Shepard. Chemist. Biologist. Only passable electrician. Left comms to more qualified individuals."

"Whatever. Leave it on the table then." She turned and stood, setting a makeshift directional transmitter on the sill of the shattered window. Glass fell to the floor as she cleared a space for it. Then she literally tore the beacon apart in front of his eyes.

One-and-a-half minutes passed, Mordin patiently watching Shepard work her magic in the midst of a ruined combined-living area. Yellowish ichor and seeker bug carcasses covered nearly every surface, and the salarian quickly tired of examining the same biomechanical construct time and time again.

"Created transmitter… how?" he asked.

She didn't answer for several long seconds. Her hands never paused in their re-wiring. Mental issue, not physical concentration. "He always kept spare parts."

Silence. The awkward kind. Mordin surreptitiously checked the power charge on Shepard's black box. Eighty-seven percent capacity. Good enough.

"Done," she said, assault rifle whining as she primed it. "Let's move."

"All clear, boss lady," Zaeed said as they stepped out of the pre-fab.

"Good. Get down and fall in. You're rear guard."

"Aye ma'am. Where we headed?"

"GARDIAN control center. We've got some work to do, but first off," she pressed her comm. button. "Hunter to Apostle."

"Apostle, go ahead."

"Rally Point Alpha secure, proceeding to Bravo. Be advised, this is just like when we met bucket-head."

"Ah, and we would be…"

"We would be bucket-head."

Garrus sounded positively cheerful. "Wonderful. Who do we shoot?"

"No one yet. Still don't know whose turning the wheels on this one. Be careful."

"Acknowledged, Hunter."

"Apostle Actual, Encryption Code Victor," Shepard said. Her next words were too quiet for Mordin to make out. Zaeed was marching along behind them.

* * *

_Click._

"He's here, Garrus."

"So the Illusive Man wasn't pulling your leg."

"No. There's Alliance equipment and then there's his stuff. And Garrus?"

"Yeah?"

"He doesn't have my iron."

"Huh?"

"I… it's stupid. I gave him my lucky soldering iron. Sentimental. Thing was old as crap."

"Shepard, as intelligent a lady as you are, you can be more stubborn than me sometimes. It's been a long two years. For all of us."

"I know. I just… Okay. Business time. How's the road ahead look?"

"All clear. Hey, it's all clear. That's strange."

"Yep. It's a trap."

"Such an obvious one."

"Be ready when I spring it."

"Way ahead of you."

"And Garrus… thanks. Hunter out."

_Click._

* * *

"Stay sharp, people," she said as they entered the town itself. The air was stagnant, sunlight pouring down the boulevard and washing out all the color that wasn't yellow. The pre-fabs to either side were a sickly pallor, rope lights blinking a faded white as they passed.

Zaeed grunted. "Just as long as you don't tell us to stay frosty. Fuckin' hate that word. 'Stay frosty this,' 'Keep a frosty eye on that,' 'Get me a frosty from The Mog.'"

Mordin glanced aside. "Client once requested a frosty?"

"In the middle of Saharan day, can you believe it? Expected me to trudge twenty-miles to The Mog just to get him a damn frosty for his lunch. Man, you oughta have seen his face when I told him where he could shove that damn thing…"

"Contact," Mordin snapped, pistol whipped forth.

"Hold your fire," Shepard said. "It's not attacking us."

The husk stumbled out from the shadowy space between two pre-fabs. A low keening moan issued from its distended mouth; Mordin felt a shiver low in his back, watching the strange abomination wander aimlessly across the path. It shambled on, arms deceptively limp at its sides, and without ceremony, it pressed onward into an empty field.

Zaeed murmured, "Someone lost a puppy?" No one laughed.

"Watch your backs," Shepard said. "These guys are quieter than Saren's."

"Tactical choice or symptom of advanced decay?" Mordin asked.

"Don't know, don't care at this point," she said.

Zaeed was watching the area behind from behind his rifle. "As long as they'll die when we shoot them."

Their footfalls crunched in Mordin's ears. Gravel scattered before them, and another husk lurched out of the shadows ahead, stopping in the sunlight to stare at the intruders.

"Where are the collectors?" Zaeed asked.

"No need for them to risk warm bodies when the shock troops can scout for them."

"Networked intelligence? No sign of it before."

Shepard grunted. "There's all sorts of atmospheric hash, Mordin, plus the bugs, plus your gear. If they're transmitting, I wouldn't be able to pick it up even if we didn't have your black boxes around."

"Hmm. Very well," Mordin said. The husk looked at them, blue-lit eyes glaring while it moaned. The salarian steadied his arm, centering his pistol sight between the unnatural lights.

More moaning had Zaeed spin on the balls of his feet, whipping his rifle around to sight in on two more husks who had emerged onto the path behind them.

Shepard grimaced. "Keep moving, people. They're not attacking, so let's see how long we can string them along."

"We're going to let them close in behind us?"

"Only way to get in."

"Unsettling, Shepard," Mordin muttered.

"Ain't we just?"

Zaeed. "What?"

Shepard smiled grimly from behind her rifle. "These husks are being controlled; they're not attacking mindlessly like Saren's. Since they're holding back, gathering more of them, whoever's holding the leash doesn't think they can take us yet. You can tell your grandkids you scared a bunch of husks stiff."

"Yeah," Zaeed said. "Grandkids. Mordin, you got any?"

"Breeding contract negotiations fell through two years ago. Most clutch-sibling's past their mating prime now, some younger relatives currently in negotiations, but nothing too promising."

"Ah… right." Zaeed said. "Another one behind us."

"Steady, Zaeed. One step in front of the other."

"You got it, boss lady."

Silence reigned no longer. Instead, the air was filled with the low keening groaning of cybernetic corpses. A cold antiseptic blue washed across the landscape from the combined glow of cybernetics and machinery, forming a ragged ring around the trio.

"Hunter to Apostle," Shepard said over the radio. "I estimate a minute or so before things get really ugly. Helmets on, weapon's charged. Be ready for some shock and awe if necessary."

"Understood, Hunter," Garrus responded. "Be advised, something akin to light artillery is approaching from the north. It looks like a super-husk, and it's armed with something nasty, maybe three centimeter launcher or so. I can't begin to understand how they cobbled together that abomination…"

Miranda's voice cut in. "It looks as though they liquefied two, maybe three husks and combined them around whatever kind of weapon that is."

A guttural growl. "I wonder what it tastes like…"

"Ingestion of husk tissue ill-advised," Mordin said.

"Nonsense. I am pure krogan."

"Purity of genetic strain irrelevant to hardiness of gastro-intestinal—"

"Less chatter," Shepard snapped. "Apostle, what else you got?"

"Nothing, Hunter. Just that support walker and your husk fan-club. They keep coming out of the woodwork, I'm not sure how many more are swarming around between the buildings. On the plus side, the seekers don't even seem to notice you."

"Blessed are the little things. Hunter's moving up." To Zaeed and Mordin, "Come on guys, let's see how much we can press them."

"Right behind you," Mordin said, watching three husks emerge from behind an improvised rose trellis made of bent mono-rail ties. They filed up within twenty feet and then simply stood there, staring. The shiver was still there in his lower back. Zaeed behind him was quiet, tense as he swept his rifle across the seven or so husks that had formed up in rear.

"Courage, my boys," Shepard said, steadily pressing up towards the husks in front even as they shambled backwards, gradually giving ground even as they stared down the hill relentlessly.

Calm. Stay calm. Husks, not even conscious, controlled by some outside entity. Mordin chuckled to himself. Husks. Not even krogan. No farming equipment required. Would be overkill. Maybe. He glanced down to check his various offensive drugs on hand. Sedative, useless; neurotoxin, useless; paralytic agent, useless, all useless against these machines. Husks created from organic base, perhaps, but elementary simplicity for machinery to screen foreign drugs or compounds. Simple acid inelegant, more dangerous to carrier than target. No, pistol only tool of any consequence. Rehearse motions, one-two-three. Three shots, three down on the right, then move to the other flank.

Moans growing in intensity, volume. _Still_ more husks. Now count over twenty in all. Controller growing confident, opposite happening to Zaeed. Mercenary's rifle hand slightly shaking.

"Steady, boys," Shepard said. Fingers tapping out code against omnitool interface. Command too complex for Mordin to follow, but incomplete. "Hunter to Apostle, take out the walker, then engage targets of opportunity. Ten-second comm blackout on my mark; Mordin, Zaeed, cover my blitz."

One-two-three shots, then engage left flank. One-two-three shots, then engage left flank.

"Mark!" Shepard's thumb stroked the command key, and the radio blanked to static.

Finger gently strokes trigger thrice. First shot on target, entry through ruined nasal bridge, exit unknown but catastrophic. Second shot on target, upper left brow, blue cranial fluid vented explosively through side of skull. Third shot on target, center of maxilla plate. Total decapitation.

Left flank. Five targets, one engaged and down. One-two-three-four trigger pulls. Spray of blue from three, humerus bone in outstretched arm of fourth target deflects bullet, ruins arm. Additional shot dispatches target.

Behind them, Zaeed's targets stumbled under high-caliber auto-fire, glowing-blue torsos erupting in fountains of the strange fluid. To the front, Shepard charged forward with a grim smile, spraying her assault rifle in a broad arc ahead of her. Three husks of nine ahead were cut down by accelerator fire, and Shepard used a fourth as a footstool, planting her boot into its face and driving it down into the ground where its weakened skull shattered, tubing flying free from the impact. Her bound brought Shepard to the crest of the hill where she landed, rolled, and came up into a crouch, sighted in on the mass of husks laboring up the opposite side. Her rifle's ordinance rail coughed and a brilliant inferno erupted in their midst.

Mordin heard more than saw mutilated body parts, sparking and leaking blue fluid, slap into the ground around him while he dispassionately shifted aim to the two uncoordinated husks remaining to Shepard's right. To her left, Zaeed's targets were falling one by one to concentrated fire. Mordin's pistol barked thrice more, and one of his two husks collapsed. The other rocked back, but lunged towards the salarian, arms outstretched. Mordin stepped backwards, evading the first awkward grab, and clubbed the husk's temple with his free hand. As the thing spun and recoiled from the impact, he snapped off a shot into the back of its neck, spraying more blue fluid onto the gravel.

An outrageous roar assaulted Mordin's ear, and he saw an incredible spray of gravel, dirt, and loose rocks from Shepard's location. Shoving aside the husk's still-standing corpse, Mordin dashed for the crest of the hill, only to trip over an armored foot. Stumbling to the ground, he slid home behind a tree growing astride the crest, only to hear that dreadful sound again. The tree above him splintered, wooden shards whistling through the air around him, dust choking his nostrils as he felt the air displaced by something massive tearing apart the air at a substantial fraction of _c_.

"Shepard!" he shouted. Leaning out from behind the tree, he spotted the source of the earth-shattering fire. It was the walker Garrus mentioned.

Bipedal, enormous mass of biomechanical body mass, centered around an equally enormous cannon, estimated bore size twenty-five to thirty millimeters. Impossibly fast rate of fire. As he noted this, the behemoth spun its weapon and fired again at Shepard's location. The air incandesced, flashing a blinding blue in an impossibly straight line from the muzzle of the cannon to the point in the ground where it impacted, and as though in slow-motion, Mordin saw dirt and rock and gravel explode off the back of the hill, not five feet away from the first hit.

One-two shots at the behemoth, and it turned back to Mordin, a bared and charred human skull grinning ghoulishly at the salarian while its gun came into line forty feet away. Another pistol shot skipped off the massive creature's armor, sending up a puff of dust, comically small in comparison to the monster's weapon. The cannon's barrel came into line and Mordin stared down its length, into the blank, black eyes of the behemoth. Death would come instantly, or close enough to it that it wouldn't matter, even to salarian synapses.

Nothing. Mordin stared into the face of death, and death stared back at him.

Then death's face was torn away by a hypervelocity slug, the report of a rifle echoing after from the ridge to the east.

"Got him," Garrus called out on the radio. The jamming had stopped. "Hunter, you're in the clear. You okay?"

The dust drifted in the stagnant wind.

"Hunter?" Garrus asked.

"Wait one, Apostle." Zaeed replied.

Mordin collapsed his pistol, tucking it away under his coat as he scrabbled over ruined terrain into the settling dust. "Shepard!" he said. "Shepard!"

Coughing greeted him as Zaeed manifested, a helmeted silhouette in the dust. As Mordin drew near, the man grabbed a hand and hauled Shepard to her feet.

"Apostle, Hunter. I'm all right," she said, coughing again. "Helmet's busted all to hell, but I'm all right."

A poignant moment of silence. "Apostle here. Scared me there, Hunter."

"You sure took your sweet time, Apostle," Shepard said as Mordin lightly pressed on her neck, checking for injuries.

"You know me," Garrus said. "Couldn't decide what drink to bring to the party."

"Next time, just pick something fizzy. We're moving up, Hunter out."

Batting away Mordin's attentions, Shepard hefted her rifle and flipped out her visor. "Save it for the debrief, Mordin. Fall in."

They went down the reverse slope, over the shattered shells of a dozen more husks. Past the shuddering corpse of the behemoth, where Mordin stared at the half-demolished skull. The human bones jutted out from a hideous mash of armor, decaying flesh, and sparking metal.

The one remaining eye socket gleamed black, the color of every species' eyes as they died, the iris muscles relaxing and opening the pupils, curiously described in every known language as "windows to the soul". Most poetic description paradoxically batarian, a species not generally known for poetry. All eyes turn black. All windows open upon death. Batarian, human, asari, salarian, turian…

A single gunshot erupted from the side, shattering the remaining portion of skull and breaking Mordin's reverie. Shepard's pistol smoked as she collapsed it and drew her rifle once more.

"Insurance," she said.

Mordin nodded curtly and followed her down the path. Insurance. Prudent.

* * *

**Codex Entry: M-57 Hammerhead**

A flashy, if expensive workhorse, the M-57 Hammerhead was the brainchild of a cooperative venture between retired Marine Commander Michelle O'Connor and aviation engineer Kenneth Nyugen. Funded by significant private investment, the two started a business venture to provide a durable, quality reconnaissance vehicle for Systems Alliance Marines working on planets with hostile environments, hostile natives, or both. With quality at a premium and cost no object, their engineers designed the M-57 Hammerhead from the ground up to be the best vehicle they could create. After toning down several blueprints and even more prototypes, Jasper Engineering finally settled upon a vehicle that was both cost-effective to produce, and still maintained the high standards of survivability and versatility demanded by Commander O'Connor.

The result was a masterpiece of a hovertank. Equipped with a powerful mass effect field and three turbines (two auxiliary and a main turbine aft with two sets of counter-rotating blades), the Hammerhead can maintain a height of between one and ten meters off the ground for an extended period of time, or boost itself up to half-a-kilometer into the air, where it can serve as a "poor man's helicopter" for a brief period of time. The addition of what amounts to a vectored thrust afterburner affords not only fantastic maneuverability in combat situations, but the ability to climb over three kilometers above a planet's surface before heat issues overwhelm the engine.

In terms of armament and armor, the Hammerhead and its crew of three is protected by a thin layer of sloped composite armor, equivalent to four inches of rolled steel, as well as a robust, if finicky, kinetic barrier. Its turret is similarly protected, and encases an auto-loading smoothbore cannon capable of launching both traditional forty-millimeter mass accelerator slugs and light anti-tank guided missiles (LATGM's). Also equipped is a coaxial machine-gun, capable of placing five-hundred rounds per minute downrange.

In the field, marines learned to love what few Hammerheads were deployed. Expense was one factor limiting procurement of a vehicle which was superior to the Mako in all regards except passenger space and drive-train durability. The other was the reason field and ship technicians learned to curse the name Hammerhead. Being a "HOPE" (Highly-Overengineered-Piece-of-Excrement), the Hammerhead was incredibly maintenance intensive, with most of its reliability problems stemming from its hybridized drive-train, its too-finely-tuned kinetic barrier, and most damning of all, fouling of the main gun due to the poor quality LATGM's procured for active service.

Despite this, Jasper Engineering continues to sell the Hammerhead in small quantities, often with a supply of quality in-house LATGM's included pro-bono. Many of these sales have been made at a loss, yet the company shows no sign of folding, leading to rampant speculation as to the source of Jasper Engineering's funding.

**

* * *

Author's Notes:**

I did say this was a long-time coming, didn't I? Well, it's here, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Scion's are nasty. In this context, they're armed with what amounts to a tank-gun that can fire three rounds in three seconds before they have to internally load another clip – hence why Garrus was able to save Mordin. I'm sure they've also got the biotic effects they have in canon, but Shep & Co. are going to have to learn about that the hard way as well. Also, can't have a party with your helmet on. That's just downright un-cinematic.

And don't worry, Tali-fans. Shepard says "bucket-head" endearingly.

So, I know that this story doesn't feature the M-44 Hammerhead. There's a good reason: that vehicle doesn't make any canonical sense, a rant on which I could go for an hour. The M-57 Hammerhead, however, _is_ featured, if only for a short while. The M-57 is what the M-44 should have been.

Enough with the military geekiness though. Mordin is an absolute _blast_ to write. He's one of my favorite characters in the game, maybe second only to Tali, simply because through him, BioWare actually made us examine the ethics of what pretty much amounts to limited genocide.

And yes, I know that the Sahara today isn't within 20 miles of Mogadishu. I also know it's exceedingly unlikely you'd be able to get a frosty in Mogadishu. I also know that desertification is going to be a mutha to reverse, even with non-human scientific and engineering expertise.

By the way, a big shoutout to Raven Studios, whose stories "Cause & Effect" and "Newton's First Law" greatly inform and inspire my writing and myself respectively. If you haven't read them before, go do so. "NFL" updates often and well, and "C&E" is a beautiful and poignant look at what a "colonist / war-hero" Shepard went through to get where she got. I won't ever write backstory for my Shepard, simply because Raven Studios has already done so with far more adroitness and talent than I could ever muster.

~ Ferrard


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